Night
by nia-ox
Summary: 'The hungriest would gather at his door at nightfall, vying for the chance to earn a few coins to feed their families by selling their bodies. Had I been older when my father died, I might have been among them.' Katniss/Cray Katniss/Peeta
1. Chapter 1

**A few notes before I begin. I read the Hunger Games years ago now, and fell in love. I didn't want to write anything for the Hunger Games so as not to tarnish its glory. True story, bro. But now I am, and not because I've fallen out of love, but because I can't seem to find what I'm looking for in a HG P/K story here.  
**

**For the purpose of this story, I have moved forward slightly the age at which Katniss receives (or in this case, doesn't) the bread from Peeta. Katniss is 14 rather than 11 (if I understand the timeline correctly/remember it).**

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Head Peacekeeper Cray was a heavy drinker, and was hated in District 12. This had nothing to do with the stigma of being Head Peacekeeper. We hated him for soliciting prostitution from the impoverished, starving women of the Seam.

My mother had looked on sadly when I asked her, as a child, why there were ladies by his door. Queuing up, like they did for the Reaping. She had not explained, but I came to understand, as I grew, what the ladies went there for. They went there to sell what they had left, the love they should only give to a loved one. But now she was so far gone from me I couldn't ask her – would she still love me if I volunteered?

No matter. She was gone, and Papa was gone, too. It was me, and Prim, my sickly little Primrose. Her once-bright hair had become lifeless and stringy. I didn't catch my own reflection often enough to know if I looked much better. Prim was becoming ill; coughing a tiny hacking cough that she had not enough sense to hide from me as I hid mine from her. The nights were getting colder. The bed we shared seemed to hold no warmth. I'd stopped feeding Mother a while ago: is that cruel? I gave her what I could, I could never starve her like that- but she seemed to continue on in a way that Prim and I could not. Prim and I had not eaten in a week. Mother had not eaten in two.

We were starving to death.

I'd run out of things to sell for food. I couldn't resort to begging. I wracked my weary brain, light from lack of food, for any idea. I was walking. When was I walking? The bakery wasn't open: it was late. The window, usually filled with delicacies, was empty. They couldn't have sold it all.

The bins. Did I really think before delving into them, looking for anything, anything at all? A heavy blow dashed me to the floor.

"Get out of here, you Seam brat! No good vermin!" She screamed. Mrs Baker. Mrs Mellark.

I scrambled up, running from the scene. I tripped over a loose paving stone, and flew across them, scraping my palms and my knees and landing in the dirt. I thought I could not get up. My entire body seemed ready to die, here, now. It was raining. Droplets of water crept through my clothes and danced across my neck. I had mud in my mouth, from somewhere. I spat. I heaved myself up.

Peeta Mellark was in my class in school. He stood at the window, staring out at me. He had bread in his hands. He could afford to eat, afford to live. He could eat bread and live.

I turned away in disgust, and as I trudged away, I heard his mother screaming at him. Probably about the Seam brat.

This was my final chance to find another option, any thing, any small sliver of hope in the darkness. But there was no light.

There was no light until I passed his door, and saw it opening for him to survey the women, shivering and wet, being passed over, until he picked his girl for the night.

Once I'd reached home and stood, staring at the shivering form of Prim, I resigned myself to selling the one thing I had hoped I would never have to. Myself.


	2. Chapter 2

**There is a rape scene ahead, but not awfully graphic.**

**I do not own the Hunger Games nor its characters.  
**

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I returned from school with Prim that afternoon with a haul. Madge Undersee had brought lunch from home and had not finished one half of her sandwich. I had liberated that sandwich from her table, where she had so conveniently left it.

I thought she may have seen me taking it, but if so, she mentioned nothing. The cafeteria made me nauseous that day. And so, my sister and my mother had a sandwich of soft bread and beef. Probably fresh that day from the butcher. I could not touch it, and it did them better than it would me.

Nothing passed my lips today, not even water, for every time I sipped, I thought of my plans for nightfall and bile rose inside of me until I was heaving at the side of our home.

I tucked them both in early, in the same bed, and watched them quietly as they fell asleep, sated as much as they both knew how to be. And I stepped out of the room, with my hunter's feet, as my father had once called them, into what was once my mother's wardrobe. I had sold the physical thing a while ago, and the roof had given in too, letting cascades of rain seep through to the point where I thought it might bring the whole house down. In one untouched corner, lay a neat pile of my mother's clothing from her Merchant days.

I had sold the majority of them, keeping only four dresses. They were both too big for myself and Prim, and I had been prepared to sell them also, until my mother snapped out of her reverie to cry when she spotted me taking them. They had some sentimental value, I assumed. Perhaps one was what she wore on the day she first met my father, the other on the first date, another their wedding, another when she found out he'd died. At least, I assumed this. I could hardly ask.

I picked up the pale blue one, the smallest of the lot. I hoped it would look alright. There was very little womanliness to fill it as my mother once had. I used rainwater, cupped in my hand, to clean my face. I pinched my cheeks, letting the blood flow, hoping to look healthier. I didn't think Cray had a preference, but I would take my chances. I donned my father's old hunting jacket. There was nothing I could do for my hair: it was raining, and there was no hood to the soft leather, one thing I could not bear to part with.

I closed the door quietly, and slipped off through the Seam, head down, knuckles tight around myself, willing myself to be strong. I was here rather early, I thought, twilight. There seemed to be only myself and another woman here. She looked less deserving than me, I thought spitefully. Maybe I had colour in my cheeks, maybe I had on a Merchant dress and I was still clinging onto my youth, but her cheeks were full. She did not struggle for breath, she did not shake. She stood hunched and leaning against the wall. She had eaten today.

He came an hour later. There were ten of us today, and I continued to pinch my cheeks as they came. Maybe he would like me more if he thought I was healthy. The door opened and I looked up. Should I smile? I felt like I was at the Reaping.

He surveyed us, heavy browed and reeking of liquor. He scanned the small gathering without interest, until he saw me. And his eyes lit.

I had never been popular with boys at school, nor men in town. I was Katniss Everdeen. I was a child, until today. I was not worth looking at.

It was a year later when I realised why exactly he had picked me that night, and it was because of what I gave to him in return for coins. Not just my body, as the other women did. I gave him my virginity. I gave him what men paid a high price for in other districts, he told me later. I gave him my innocence.

It was awful. He sweated on top of me, barely waiting to say hello – what had I expected? Food? – before pushing himself into me. I cried out in agony. It felt as though I was splitting in two. His eyes were beady, and sweat gathered on his upper lip as he attempted to watch me as he slowly and painstakingly stole the last of my dignity. The only redemption I allowed myself was that he had used protection, something from the pharmacy that I didn't really understand, some sort of sheath. But I knew that it would keep me safe from another mouth to feed.

I would not meet his eyes once. When he had finished, and removed himself, I wiped my cheeks where I had let a few tears creep out, unnoticed. The pain seemed to never stop, the ache. I looked down at my naked form and saw the blood that stained my thighs and his sheets. He looked pleased.

What was protocol for this? Did I…ask for the money? But no. He handed me my dress, and my coat, and then a fat bag of coins. He smiled and poured himself a drink. I gawped at the bag. I had never before felt the weight of coins in my palm such as that night. I had sold most of the furniture in our house; I had sold our clothes and even my mother's wedding ring. I had not felt a heavy pouch like this even for the last.

I got dressed and prepared to leave, claw around the pouch of money the entire time. I could feel my underwear dampening with blood already. I hoped there was none on my mother's dress, lest she might notice.

Who was I fooling? She would not notice.

"Katniss," he croaked, just as I reached the door. "I would like to see you again."

I nodded and left. I curled my hands around the money as I staggered home. It was no longer raining, but the floor was wet and muddy with coal dust and dirt. My heels dragged in it. It was night, now. There seemed to be no light in the district, no light in the sky.

I crept in through the door just as the heavens opened once more. I could hear Prim snoring softly in the other room. I removed my clothes for the second time that night and was relieved to find that there was only a small wet patch of dark blood on my mother's dress. I could remove it.

What I could not remove was the shame. Who had I ever thought to give my virginity to? A husband, in a far off time when things were not so hard? No. I knew, I knew that they would always be hard. I had never thought to give it away so carelessly.

Not carelessly, Katniss. I told myself. The coins would save our lives. I stepped, naked, out into the torrential rain, and began to cry, as I felt the sweat rinse down my body, and watched clean rivers eventually emerge between my legs, until I shook with the cold and my legs were clean. The blood that seeped through my underwear looked black in the darkness.

I had saved my little sister's life, and for that I would give everything. Even myself.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you for your reviews and for reading. As always, the Hunger Games are not mine nor do I claim them to be.**

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When I awoke the next morning, it almost seemed as if nothing had changed. I turned my head to watch my sister and mother, lying still and curled around each other. My mother responded in her sleep to Prim's needy fingers clinging around hers, and I thought sometimes she may be returning to us. I pushed my hair out of my eyes and swallowed, trying to rid my mouth of the acrid taste. I got up.

And then I remembered when I felt the stab of searing pain across my abdomen. I stood up and immediately blood rushed from me, dripping to my legs. I rushed to the bathroom and sat, then tried to mop myself up with rags my mother had used in her healing days for wounds. I felt as though I did have a battle wound.

But the money sat under my pillow and I knew it was worth it. I dressed quickly; it was a Saturday and my mother and sister would sleep in for a while. I counted out the coins in my palms and balked. This would be enough to buy us a feast and still have some left over. But I couldn't spend it all, as much as I wished to. Despite Cray's request to see me again, there would be a time when I was not in his favour, and we'd return to starving.

I had to use the money I'd earned wisely. I walked into town, grimacing as I went from the agony between my legs. It was less an ache and more the constant feeling of a knife being slashed into my flesh.

I first visited the Hob, the black market of town. I had been terrified going inside on my first trip, with my father at my side. After he'd died, the people of the Hob allowed me access to sell everything we owned. They knew how hard we'd taken it, that we were barely scraping by, especially recently. I first went to Greasy Sae's stand. Her soup was probably palatable – some sort of wild dog stew – and I bought some. She eyed the pouch in my hand as I dropped the coin on the worn wood.

"Where did you get that kind of money, girl?" She hissed, looking at me in disbelief. Ripper, the liquor seller, leaned over to take a look.

For a second, I thought to run. They would seize my money and leave me starving again. But they let it drop, and I sighed in relief. They knew I'd sold everything we had: what else could be left but me? They probably thought I was too young.

And then Ripper's best customer stopped by: Haymitch Abernathy. He gave her altogether too much money for his own good. He eyed me as I stood by Sae's stand. A haunted look passed across his face, before he turned to leave. He collided with Ripper's second best customer. Cray.

"Watch where you're going, won't you, Abernathy!" He chided, in a lighter tone than I'd heard in a while. Definitely a lighter tone than he'd had with me last night. I shuddered and went to slip away quietly, but tripped over the corner of the stall. My hip collided painfully with the counter.

He looked up and recognition flared in his eyes. "Good morning, Katniss," he said measuredly. I panicked. I was shaking uncontrollably, the metal spoon clanging against the bowl Sae had given me. I gently set it down on the wood.

"Mr Cray," I mumbled, moving quietly past him. I looked back for a second and saw Sae's expression; realisation and pity.

I never wanted anyone to pity me. And I never wanted anyone to know. I walked into the centre of town and my skin warmed in the morning sun, no sign of the night's downpour. I stopped by the butcher and bought a modest dinner for us. I was walking back to the Seam when I saw the bakery from the corner of my eye.

Outside was Peeta, the boy with the bread. All the bread he wanted to stay fed and alive. I felt the heavy weight of the coin purse in my pocket and changed my course, holding my head high and also holding the cries threatening to spill. My assertive walk was causing me immense pain, and I felt wetness. I was bleeding again. I ignored it; I had more pressing and important matters to attend to.

I sauntered into the bakery as well as a fourteen year old can saunter, I suppose. I spotted the largest loaf, the same size as the one Peeta had held in his hands days before, taunting me. _I can have this, you can't._

I wasn't sure when it had begun mattering to me what Peeta thought. It didn't. I just wanted to prove I could buy what he could. I had the money. He gawped at me as he followed me inside.

"Can I help?" He said quietly. I wasn't sure if there was more than one meaning in his words, but I ignored everything but the present.

"The largest loaf you have please." He began wrapping it for me, and I noticed his eye. It was blackened and bruised, and there was a scrape across his cheekbone.

"How did you do that?" I asked, pointing rudely.

He looked up for a second and his face looked pained. "I dropped some bread into the fire." His mouth opened and closed for a minute and he looked ready to say more when his mother appeared.

"You brat! Get out of here! Thief!" She approached me with her rolling pin above her head and Peeta blanched. He pushed her away. I eyed the rolling pin and suddenly his 'dropping bread in the fire' made much more sense.

"Mother!" He held his arm out in front of me. "She's a paying customer. You have no right to talk about her like that!"

"Let me see the money, then!" She hissed, still attempting to pass her son. Peeta was my age; not exactly large as his older brothers were, but he was stockily built, all of the Mellarks were.

I threw a smattering of coins on the counter, still having said nothing. I regretted coming in, now. I had been trying to steal from her days ago, and now I appeared with money? It wasn't my best idea.

"And where did you get that, then, you little Seam brat?" She taunted, taking the coins and charging me what I was sure would be more than what the average passer by would pay. "Become a little Seam _slut_ have we?"

I felt the colour draining from my face. I could say nothing. Mrs Mellark smirked and turned on her heel. Peeta handed me the bread.

"Katniss," he began, and I wondered how he knew my name. "I'm sorry about her."

"It's fine," I mumbled, reaching out for the still-warm bread.

"And the other day, with the bread," he began, but I cut him off. I knew what his mother had said, and she'd said worse today. He didn't need to apologise.

Let the boy with the bread keep his damned bread after this, I thought as I walked home with the heat of the bread burning my stomach. I didn't need his damn bread, paid for or stolen.

Prim was awake when I got in. "Where have you been?" She cried. "I was scared."

Little Prim was ten, and growing up a tad too quickly for it. I smiled at her and wrapped my arms around her. "I brought food."

I roused my mother and we sat at the tiny table in the living room. I cut them the loaf and added the butcher's meat.

"How did you get this?" Prim whispered. Even she knew I couldn't have paid for something like this.

"I traded something last night." I smiled at her. She smiled back, uncomprehending, and guzzled her meal.

They both fell asleep early, so full they could barely keep their eyes open. I washed our clothes and removed the blood stains from my mother's old dress. I would return tonight.


	4. Chapter 4

**You may notice a change in tense occasionally here. This is intentional, I am aware of it. Katniss is remembering, but the memories are so vivid she slips into them, she is still there. Once again, a rape scene; for those uncomfortable unfortunately it is a recurring theme due to the nature of the story and that is why I gave it the M rating.**

**Thanks to readers and reviewers. I do not own the Hunger Games.  
**

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"You came back," he croaked upon seeing me at the front of the queue. "I thought you might not."

He didn't acknowledge the other women, destitute behind me, as he slipped a heavy hand around my waist. I felt guilty for a second but it dissipated as he closed the door behind me. Drowning in my nerves the night before, I hadn't seen so much of the house. It was a modest two floor house, with subtle hints at his riches: not all floors were carpeted, in fact only his bedroom, and there was no tile like in the justice building. I cruelly thought for a second of my money, tucked inside my bed, and wondered if he lived modestly in order to pay for sex.

"Katniss, I-" he began, but faltered. He wiped perspiration from his upper lip and I observe that he hadn't shaved. He didn't always, but he was clean shaven last night. I wonder why I am comparing everything to last night.

_Because you have nothing else to compare it to_, I answer myself. I have no way of explaining myself. I never said no to him, I never said I did not want to sleep with him. I offered myself to him, and he took the offer without a question and paid me for my fruits. But I never wanted it. If I had any other option, I would never have. But I didn't cry out, not after that first yelp. I restrained myself and I let a few tears go, and not for the pain – I have always been able to deal with pain – but to remind myself it was okay to let go of the one thing I hoped to keep for myself.

He tried again. "Would you like something to eat or drink?"

I contemplated. "A drink would be fine, thank you."

He disappeared and I stared after him, wobbling ungainly from foot to foot. The pain in my abdomen was no longer excruciating unless I bent over or moved my legs too far apart. Had I been a healer I might have known that…aggravating the area would not help matters. He returned with a glass of dark red liquid, and I compared it quietly to myself to the blood that stained my legs from the night before.

"I know you shouldn't really be drinking at your age," he began – but was then struck by the same thing that struck me. He was paying me for sex; if I was old enough to sell my love to a man thirty years older than me, then I was old enough to consume alcohol. My second thought was that I'd really have rathered some water. "That was stupid. I'm sorry, Katniss."

I struggled with this vision in front of me. What exactly was he apologising for? My age? His willingness to sleep with someone my age? The alcohol mistake? Anything?

"It's fine," I conceded. I sipped at the drink gingerly and was hit by a rich burst of berries, but with an underlying bitterness. The silence was palpable and I drank in larger gulps to fill it. He was drinking some, too. I presumed it was lighter than his usual tipple.

I began to feel slightly fuzzy, as though my head was heavy. I drained the last of the glass and turned to him, fuelled by the heaviness of my limbs and my need to shorten the ordeal. "Shall we get started?"

He nodded and we walked up the stairs. I feel woozy and walking up the stairs doesn't hurt as much as I'd thought it would. I remove my clothes quietly and lay on the bed, feeling the softness of the sheets against me and closing my eyes for a second.

I am alone for a minute. In my own world, I could be with anyone. I could be with a lover, I could be with some one who cares. And then I feel his weight on the bed and his rough hands slide up my calves and to my thighs. He presses them apart and the pang of pain is back.

I panic silently and keep my eyes closed. He pushes in.

Agony. Burning agony. I can barely breathe the pain is so tangible. My fingers claw at the sheets and I try not to scream out. I feel as though I'm being torn apart. If anything, he goes faster and harder. My eyes flick open for a second and he's smiling at me.

Does he think I'm enjoying this? The panic of seeing his face there unhinges me and my mouth opens in a yelp, strangled and breathless and there are tears in my voice. I snap my mouth shut again.

It seemed to go on for longer, it seemed to be more excruciating. I realised somewhere in-between where it felt like death would be better than this agony that it was just reopening a wound. And wounds heal. It might get better.

He slows for a second and I open my eyes. Dare I hope it's over? He is still inside me, intruding and uncomfortable, but the pain is not as bad as he stills. He reaches over to my face and cups it in his sweaty palm. "You're the first I've cared about it feeling good for, you know." He smiled and continued with new fervour.

The intensity was even worse and finally, my guard broke and I cried out, no longer able to hold my voice in my throat, it spilled over and with each jolting pained moan, he worked harder, he seemed to become more excited. I struggled to breathe, the pain so entirely consuming that I lost all concept of coherence.

After an eternity, it was over. I collected my money. It was less than last time. I left.

I practically crawled through the door. Prim was awake, somehow, why was Prim awake?

Was it the alcohol that reduced me to the state I was in? "Get Ma!" I cried out. "Help me, get mother, get her, please Prim!"

I collapsed to the floor. Prim somehow managed to rouse my mother and then I screamed at Prim to get back in the bedroom. I grasped my mother's hands and she stared blankly at me, her eyebrows furrowed. She knew something was wrong, but she didn't know what.

I regained some sort of semblance of understanding. "In childbirth, Ma, you sewed them up when they broke, yes?" I begged.

She nodded.

"I need you- I need you to do that for me now. I- I'm bleeding," I mumbled.

On auto-pilot, she retrieved her kit and proceeded to clean me. I felt violated; how was that possible? That I could allow a man inside me and accept it, but my mother's clinical touches appalled me?

I lay on the dirty floor and cried when she sewed my broken body by candlelight. I had to trust her, even though she'd been gone for so long, I worried she may have forgotten how to fix anyone.

When it was over, she stood and blew out the candle; the birds began to sing somewhere outside. "You're only fourteen." She whispered, and returned to bed.


	5. Chapter 5

My mother didn't say anything else about the situation. She hadn't come back to us enough to understand what her child was doing. Prim was placated by an excuse that I had tripped and fallen.

I became sick, and my mother was unable to tend to me, so I stayed in bed. Darius, one of Cray's Peacekeepers came to our home to check this claim, and found me. He looked at me in pity when I struggled to open the door; my mother hadn't heard it, again.

"I'll tell him." He mumbled. As though I would care that Cray didn't know I was sick. Was Darius bound to tell him because it was _his_ fault I was sick, or because Darius didn't want me to lose my place as flavour of the month?

I returned to school on the following Wednesday. Somehow, everyone knew something was different. They all stared; everyone but the ignorant bread boy. I sat with Madge Undersee at lunch, and she didn't try and make small talk with me – we just sat. I imagined this may be the start of some sort of friendship.

A week later, I returned to Cray's door. The pain wasn't as bad as before, but the self loathing was worse. I returned home with two bags full of coins; I felt rich, elated. I assumed it was his gift to me. An apology for making me sick.

I went back the next night and the night after that, until I could afford to repair our roof and still feed my mother, sister and me. I found out that Cray's first name was Hubris. I called him Hugh. I slept with him every night, and then every other night, for a month, before he gave me a proposition.

"Katniss," he broached, as I dressed myself. "I'd – I'd like to make you a permanent fixture in my life."

I paused. "What do you mean?"

"Not marriage, or anything," he said sternly. "You know as well as I do that the Head Peacekeeper of District 12 could not be seen to fraternise with a girl such as yourself." _A Seam slut_, Peeta's mother said spitefully in my mind. Why did I think of Peeta? Arrogant boy with the bread. "But still, I want you to exclusively be mine. I would like to perhaps make a contract. For you to…live with me, here."

I ran out of the house, tears blinding my vision, until I found my way to the Meadow. I made my way under the fence, in the exact spot my father had taken me. How had I not come here since he'd gone? My fingers tentatively found what my mind did not remember – the bow and arrow and gamebag my father had hidden in a hollow log.

"If you do this, you'll never have the chance to try and fix everything you've ruined by doing it in the first place," I whispered to myself. I trudged deeper into the woods. The fact I was considering it at all made me a sickening person. I had been _selling_ myself to a man who now wanted to …buy me permanently. If I did this, I would never be free to any other man but him. I would be owned until he discarded me, a broken woman worth nothing. If I didn't do this, we would die.

The anger inside me bled through to my fingers and I latched the arrow into the arch of the bow like I'd watched my father do. I let go and it fell to my feet, pinching my fingers. I collected it and continued.

I hit one tree directly, once. Every other shoot was a miss. I deposited the tools back into the log as the sun came up and ducked under the fence again. My family were curled up, asleep. I returned to bed and achieved two hours' sleep before I had to wake for school.

I roused Prim and we walked hand in hand through the Seam.

"Peeta Mellark was asking about you yesterday," she said, staring up at me. I had made it Prim's duty to buy the bread after the last time. Everyone loved Prim, at least because she didn't look like a Seam brat and didn't behave like her elder sister. She brought brightness into everyone's day, no matter how little time she spent in it.

"Did he now?" I said scathingly.

"He asked how you were, and he said he was making your favourite this morning, so I thought maybe you could go instead of me today." She said this all in one breath and I balked.

"My favourite? I don't have a favourite!"

"Yes you do," she replied, smirking.

"What is it, then?" I honestly had no clue.

"Maybe you should go to the bakery to find out. Oh, and don't worry. Peet's Ma is sick, so she won't be there." When did my little sister become so observant? "It's probably the same thing you had," she said as an afterthought. Less observant, thankfully.

She was turning eleven tomorrow, and six months after would be my birthday. She was a spring child, and I full of autumn and winter, the darkness.

I was going to have to go to the bakery anyway to commission a birthday cake for her. She had never had one before, and I was determined to give this to her.

"Alright, I'll go." I told her, all smiles.

I stopped off at the Hob before the dreaded trip to the bakery. It had become a place I frequented more and more often, stopping mostly at Greasy Sae's stall for whatever concoction she'd made for the day.

Today it was squirrel.

"Sae," I asked, mouth full, "where do you get the meat from? I know the butcher doesn't do this."

She smiled, teeth like sparse gravestones in her mouth, and then her eyes lit. "Here comes the perpetrator now, Katniss."

I turned and a handsome tall man – boy – from the Seam came sauntering up with a game bag. He eyed me up and down, and allowed himself to be introduced by Sae.

"This is Katniss, and this-" she gestured at him, "is Gale. He does the hunting around here."

Gale eyed me warily, yanking out three squirrels onto the counter for Sae, for which he received a pouch of coins. "Catnip? What kind of a name is that?"

"Katniss," I mumbled, suddenly feeling very very small. Miniscule, ant-like. Just a speck of dust in the coal mine of the universe.

"I like Catnip better. Asking about the meat, were you?"

I nodded. "I wanted to know where you got it."

Gale frowned heavily. "None of your business."

Sae scoffed. "Don't get all high and mighty with her, Gale. He hunts in the woods, Katniss."

I nodded once more- was this my only motor function? "My father used to hunt. I tried to use his arrows not long ago, but I'm not very good at it." I scraped my spoon around the bowl again.

"You're Cray's girl, aren't you?" I blanched and it seemed as though the squirrel soup was ready to make a reappearance. "I'll teach you your way around a bow, Catnip. Sunday, meet me. I won't go far in."

He walked off, and left me sitting on the rickety stool next to Sae, silent for a moment. "You could get away from him if you learn to hunt, girl."

"Crossing the Head Peacekeeper and then poaching illegally? I don't have a deathwish, Sae." I mumbled, trying to keep the tears from welling in my eyes. If only Gale had come sooner. If only I had not been such a desperate Seam _slut_ and started hunting instead.

I would never be free.


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you for your reviews and for reading. This next chapter is difficult and more graphic than previous.**

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I stopped at the bakery after the Hob, feeling fragile and thanking whatever luck I had that I wouldn't be seeing Mrs Mellark, for one mention of 'slut' might tear me down completely.

The bakery was relatively quiet and thus the youngest Mellark raised his head as I walked in.

"You came." He beamed.

"I'm here to commission a cake for Prim," I mumbled. "It's her birthday tomorrow. I don't want a really big one. Just one about this big." I made a circular gesture with my index finger.

He ignored my comments entirely. "Did Prim tell you I made your favourite?"

"I don't think I have a favourite," I countered.

"Cray hates cheese buns. He's told me so. Since you've been around he's been buying up practically all of my stock. Don't tell me they're not your favourite."

I gawped. I had been eating rather a lot of cheese buns recently. He took my silence as an approval, and deposited a box on the counter for me.

"Can you do the cake for Prim?" I asked finally.

"Of course. This big, right?" He said, making a circular gesture like I'd done.

"I'll pay now." I said, thinking this might be the most awkward conversation I'd ever had. I fumbled with my money and started counting out coins.

"I don't want your money," he said, folding my outstretched hand back towards me.

"My money's as good as anyone else's." I huffed. "I can pay, I have the money."

"It's not that. I know what you had to – I know the price you had to pay for that, and I won't let you waste it on things like this. Things I can give you." He sighed and ran his free hand through his hair – the other was still on mine. "I can't explain. The day – the day you were at the bakery and my mother – well, you know. I was going to give you the bread. I could have kept you going longer. I could have saved you."

I stared at him, hard and empty. He came around the counter and grasped both my hands. "You can stop now. You can get away from this. I can help."

I pulled my hands away like I'd been burnt. "I don't want your damn bread, or your help." I stalked out of the bakery, not even turning around to see the expression I was sure would be painted across his face.

* * *

There was an empty bottle of gin on the nightstand. He came at me from nowhere; a fist to the side of my head. I went sailing across the room, colliding with a crack against the end of the bed.

"Wh- what are you doing?" I stammered, holding my face.

"Say what you mean!" He screamed. "Don't just run away from me when I ask you a question, you selfish whore!"

I threw my arms up to cover my face as he threw everything he had at me. I felt my skin splitting and stinging as the blows rained down on me. I remember my head cracking against the footboard of the bed, the dull thuds and the connection of the wood rattling my senses, the wetness that began to seep slowly through my hair.

"I could sentence you to death by whipping! Do you know that, stupid girl?"

The next thing I knew was when he was lifting me by my hair onto the bed. I screamed and clawed as he began tearing my clothes from my body. I cried out in terror. I thought back to each other time I'd despised his presence in me, but this was different. "Stop! Stop!" I screamed, voice hoarse and desperate.

He spat in my face. "I get what I paid for, now shut up."

He ripped my legs open and was inside suddenly, obtrusive and unwanted, cutting me open with his knife. I tried to use the sheets as leverage to crawl away, kicking my legs futilely as he held them in place, his stubby nails digging into my flesh. My feet connected with his shoulders repeatedly while I screamed. He insulted me, calling me _insolent child_ as though this was a punishment for a little girl.

I thought for a second of the boy with the bread, the boy who claimed he would have given me that bread and kept me alive. It's fine to make an empty promise after you've watched someone become their own regret. I wondered about ending it all once I got away from Cray. I had underestimated his repulsiveness; when people said they feared him I did not understand why – I watched him each night, disgusting as he was, above me, and I had thought he was a kitten.

This was more of a tiger, ready to rip into my flesh with his claws.

He was done, and when I felt him empty himself inside me I realised in horror he had not protected me. I could become pregnant with his child. I lurched forward and vomited over his bare feet. His fist connected with my face while I was still vomiting and as the suffocating black overcame me, I irrationally hoped I might die by choking on it.

* * *

I awoke in his house, naked. I lifted myself gingerly and my head spun; I flopped back to the bed, exhausted from only a small exertion. My vision was hazy and I had cotton mouth, a vile taste permeating my tongue.

I gently rose again, taking in the sight before me. There was vomit all over my thighs and bruises scattered across the skin I could see. My head throbbed and I recalled dimly being hit. I could not hear him moving around – I hoped he might've left for the day. I stood and felt a rush from beneath me; his milky substance mixed with my blood crept down my thigh. I gagged again and remembered why my thighs and the carpeted floor were both covered in my stomach contents.

It was then I realised that it was a Thursday; Prim and I had school. There was no clock on the dresser but from the light filtering through the window, I was late to pick her up. I quite obviously hadn't returned home last night and I knew that she'd be worried sick. I gathered my torn dress and realised with a sigh there was nothing I could do to make myself look presentable. I donned it with my hunting jacket, as it had now become, and staggered down the stairs, to the front door – but not before noticing the pile of cheese buns on the table. The light hit me and I realised with a sigh I might be able to get Prim in time for school if I rushed, but my body would not allow it. I began to make my way towards the Seam, ignoring the hushed voices and gasps as they took in my appearance.

Half way there I was met with the sight of a wailing Prim hand in hand with Peeta Mellark. The damned boy with the damned bread.

He saw me first and his eyes widened; he stopped in his tracks. He couldn't stop Prim seeing me in time.

Her wide watery eyes took me in and her drawn lips opened in a cry. She ran to me and collided with me – my body cried out in pain and I tried to disguise the yelp that escaped my lips as a 'Hello' but I don't think I succeeded.

"Where were you?" She hiccupped, her tiny arms encircling my waist. "What happened to your face?"

I didn't know what to say, and finally settled with, "Why are you here?" to Peeta, who'd joined us.

"I knew you hadn't made it home. I thought you'd want her to get to school on time," he whispered. He reached out and his fingertips grazed my face. "What has he done to you?"

I was so overwhelmed for a second with gratitude for this boy who owed me nothing, that I ignored his question. "Thank you."

"Do you want me to take her?" He asked, continuing as though Prim was not clinging to me, sobbing. "You can go home and get cleaned up."

I toyed with the idea momentarily, then realised it would send the Peacekeepers knocking. I'd been lucky to get Darius last time, and since I was no longer in Cray's favour, I didn't want to give him any reason to come to my home and rape me in front of my mother. "No, I'll go like this." Peeta balked. "It's fine, really."

We walked to school together; Peeta gave me his pullover despite my protests, attempting to cover some of my modesty. The schoolyard was alive with whispers. Firstly, why was a Merchant walking with the Seam girls? Secondly, what had happened to the Seam slut's face?

I sent Prim off to her class and rounded on Peeta as we queued outside ours. "How did you know I wouldn't be home?"

"He came in this morning to get you cheese buns." He said quietly. "He mentioned you'd _not been well_ and I knew exactly what it meant. I've been worried sick." His voice tore at the end.

"How bad does it look?" I asked, finally surrendering.

"You haven't seen?"

"I was too scared. It hurts so much," I whispered in a quiet voice.

"Let's go get you cleaned up," he said, gently taking my arm.


	7. Chapter 7

**Your response to the previous chapter was wonderful, thank you so much for making me feel slightly better about writing such a horrible scene. I'll have to ask you all to forgive me for this one, I'm not feeling myself at the moment and can tell my writing's not up to scratch, but didn't want to leave anyone hanging.**

* * *

We, or rather I, hobbled into the boys' bathroom. Luckily there was no one inside – school had only just started and so we were alone.

I faced myself in the mirror.

My lip was split, and there was a mess of blood on my chin that made it seem like I had been coughing blood. My hair had come loose from my plait and there were yellow streaks of vomit in it. My eye was a dark purple and swollen more than I'd noticed; my cheekbone and brow bone had split too and blood meshed in my eyebrow. There were four long purple bruises along my throat. He'd choked me. I tried to keep my face calm, but tears streaked out and mingled with the blood and dirt on my cheeks, leaving clear lines. I pulled my hair from my face and began re-plaiting it, noticing the dried blood that encrusted my ear like one hundred tiny dark rubies. I dreaded to think what other atrocities Peeta's pullover hid.

"Are you okay?" He asked quietly, trying not to startle me.

"No." I replied, tying my hair back into its usual plait.

"May I?" He asked, extending his arms to me. I wasn't quite sure what he was about to do and didn't reply, but he took this as acceptance. He lifted me gently up onto one of the sinks, and then disappeared into the stall. The cool metal soothed my bruised thighs.

He came out with a wad of the school economy paper that I knew was rough, and I blanched, preparing myself for pain, before he turned the faucet on the sink one down from my seat. He gently tucked my grimy hair behind my ears and cradled my jaw in his palm, while the other ran over my face, washing away the blood and sweat and sick. I only realised I was crying when he was done, and he wiped away the tears. "There's my Katniss," he smiled. "A bit beat up, but there."

I stiffened. "I'm not your Katniss."

"I- I didn't mean that," he stammered. "Just the sentiment. Our Katniss. The one we know. You know?"

I did know, and I didn't have enough energy for a fight, so I nodded.

"Why did he do it?" He asked gently, working on cleaning the blood from my fingernails.

I cleared my throat until I found my voice. "He wants me to live with him, be a, err, permanent fixture."

He looked torn.

"Sorry, I don't know why I'm telling you this." I jumped down from the sink abruptly and crumpled at the pain. His arm was around me instantly. "Let's go back to class."

"Are you really ready?" He worried.

"Yeah. Thanks, Peeta."

We entered the classroom sheepishly and Ms Frost opened her mouth to shout at us for our tardiness before she saw me emerging from behind Peeta. Her mouth opened and closed, then pursed. "Take your seats."

Peeta and I sat in our usual seats and so he heard my gasp as I sat down. His head whipped around to me and I gave him a weak smile. The lesson passed in a blur; my head was down to the desk. I could only think that I'd received no money for my horror last night. It had been stolen from me.

Prim found me at lunch. She usually stayed with her friends but today I suspected she was scared to leave me alone. She bounded over as fast as her legs could carry her to mine and Madge Undersee's table.

"How are you?" She asked, nestling herself under the crook of my arm.

"I'm fine, Prim," I said, as convincingly as my split lip would allow.

"This would've been the worst birthday ever if it wasn't for the cake. I didn't get a chance to properly thank you for it."

I gawped. I had forgotten Prim's birthday. Every other birthday I'd woken up early and made her breakfast, and this birthday –the last one she had where she could wake up without fear of the Reaping, I'd ruined.

"I'm so, so, sorry Prim." Tears began to well in my eyes. "You know I didn't mean for this to happen." I stroked her hair. "Hang on, cake? What cake?"

"Peeta dropped it off this morning when he picked me up for school. He said you ordered it for me yesterday."

I looked up in his direction and he was staring back. I mouthed a thank you to him, and he tipped his head to me. "I wish I'd been there to see your face."

"I haven't eaten any yet," she said cheerfully. "I wasn't really hungry because I was so worried. And Peeta said I had to eat a proper breakfast in the morning, not cake. That's why he brought me the cheese buns. Where were you last night, Katniss? What happened?" Her young mind flitted from happy to sad so quickly. I wasn't sure how to broach the subject. Did she know what her sister did in the nights? Did she suspect?

"I got into a fight with a wild dog." I lied through my teeth. Madge squeezed my hand from across the table, staring at me sadly. Did she know what it was costing me to lie? "I went to collect some eggs in the woods for breakfast and didn't realise how dangerous it was."

"It's my fault!" Prim wailed.

"No! It's not your fault, don't ever think that. I do the things I do out of love for you, and in no way is anything that ever happens to me your fault." I hoped when she finally found out that her sister was a cheap prostitute she'd remember my words.

* * *

On Sunday, I ventured into the woods with Gale. My lip, cheek and brow were all healing, as was my now green tinged eye. I still looked horrible, but not as bad. Gale still balked when he saw me.

"Catnip Everdeen," he nodded as I approached. "Your father worked with mine in the mines. Before."

I understood now, his offer. His father and mine had been work friends, and had died together, and that is the sort of bond which tethers people to one another when they're floating in grief. Gale did not seem to be floating any more; he'd found a boat and was tugging me into safety.

Our first lesson was with a bow. Despite Gale's bravado in the Hob, I realised he wasn't as good with a bow as my father had been, but any instruction I could get would help. Between us, we shot down a squirrel. Rather, Gale shot down a squirrel (one that looked still enough to be asleep) and I achieved welts from the snap of the bow.

Gale was quiet, and I liked that. He didn't ask questions nor offer any 'tuts' of sympathy when he surveyed my face. I think he liked that I was a girl of few words, too. We became something close to friends.

* * *

I returned to Cray on the Tuesday after Prim's birthday. He offered me no money for our last meeting, nor condolences. I wondered briefly if he remembered the horrible things he'd done at all, but when he made me scrub at the stains my vomit had left on the carpet, I realised he had. I also understood that any semblance of tenderness between he and I were forgotten. This also meant that I had to survey my options.

Peeta had said that I could get out of my situation; so had Greasy Sae and numerous others. But did they really understand the depth of my current relationship with the Head Peacekeeper? The only authority above Cray in District 12 was the Mayor, who turned a blind eye to most goings on in District 12. He knew of Cray's night-time activities, and possibly my involvement in them, but did nothing. I neither wanted nor expected him to.

Without the money I received from Cray, my family would return to the brink of death. Even though hunting in the woods now seemed a viable option once I had practiced, I knew that with the Head Peacekeeper against me, I would be whipped and eventually sentenced to death. I could not provide for my family if I was dead.

"I've thought some more about your proposition," I said, once I was finished scrubbing the carpet clean of my pollution.

"And?"

"I wouldn't be able to stay with you here. I would have to stay home to look after Primrose and my mother."

"They could live here too."

"No!" And have him take advantage of them both, too? I noticed his expression and softened my tone. "No, I couldn't put that burden on you. My mother is desperately sick – she hasn't recovered since the explosion in the mine. We lost my father. And she wouldn't want to leave his house. Prim is too young, I'd need to walk her to school."

He drank deeply from the glass he held in his tight grasp.

"But I could become more permanent if you'd like. If that's what you want."

His dark eyes shone. "And you'd be contracted to me? You'll sleep with no-one else."

"As you wish."

"How often will I see you?"

"Twice a week?" I ventured.

"Double that."

"Okay. How much money would I receive?"

"Half of my earnings."

I froze. Half of his earnings were an _extraordinary_ amount. Nothing in comparison to the Mayor's, not even a speck of dust on the amount Victors had, but in comparison to what we lived on – _it was a fortune_.

I agreed instantly.

* * *

Three months later was the Reaping of the 72nd Hunger Games. I prayed it wouldn't be me, and prayed it would be at the same time. It was not: Hazel Green, a 12 year old, took the female spot, and Sider Trace took the male. Neither came home.

We still lived in the Seam, but my income was so vast for a family of three that had lived on nothing for so long, and become accustomed to it, that we could have easily moved to the Merchant quarter had we saved for a while. My mother had gradually begun to return to her old self. She became a healer once more, and it became her duty, more often than not, to sanitise and stitch her daughter when she returned home, broken.

Yet she never attempted to stop me.

Prim thoroughly enjoyed her last year of childhood – a real childhood, without fear of Reaping – as she now flitted around with fuller cheeks in gorgeous dresses with ribbons in her hair, none the wiser as to how her sister provided for her. I however became a pariah.

The few people left in District 12 who would talk to me were Greasy Sae, my mother and sister, Haymitch Abernathy, Hubris Cray, Madge Undersee, the butcher, Gale Hawthorne, and Peeta Mellark.

Greasy Sae treated me as she always had, as an adoptive daughter. She took my tainted money and fed me each day, and she took whatever game I managed to shoot, however messy the kill.

Haymitch Abernathy would chuckle and call me _Sweetheart_ whenever we bumped into each other at the Hob.

Cray continued to use my body for sexual gratification in turn for money, but he also beat me savagely when he had too much to drink, and treated me as a housekeeper. I had very little time to myself.

Madge Undersee spent her free time in school with me, and became the closest thing I had to a girl-friend. Despite the looks she suffered, and probably the arguments with her father she suffered, she stood by me, silently albeit – but that was how I enjoyed my time spent without Cray. In turn I gave her strawberries.

The butcher bought my cleaner kills and sold to me on occasions I could not catch a morsel even from my snares. He never looked me in the eye, but he was agreeable.

Gale Hawthorne was my best friend. We spent each Sunday together, and we walked from school together, and became so close that I took a savage beating from Cray for giving myself to another man – even though I hadn't. Gale taught me to hunt until I knew to hunt alone, after which time our Sunday meetings became a time for reflection and companionship. While Delly and Bristel could be heard giggling about Gale's looks, I noticed nothing.

Peeta Mellark could not be called my friend. By the month of my 15th birthday, I had become so successful at hunting that I would trade with his father (when his mother was not around) for bread. But in the winter months, when game was scarce, I dipped into Cray's money more and more for bread, and Peeta and I worked up a rapport. I never thanked him outright for Prim's birthday, but when I returned his pullover he refused it, and said it suited me more than him. We very rarely had close encounters, but my 15th birthday was an exception.

It was my day with Hubris, unfortunately, and though I had spent the day before with my family inside due to dismal weather, I trudged to his house unwillingly, as was my routine. I knocked the door and he smiled.

"You're early. I haven't finished setting up."

It was twelve o' clock, my usual time to visit on a Saturday since I didn't have school. I pottered around, cleaning, while he poured himself a stiff drink and a glass of water for me, and set them at the table. "We're going to have breakfast. Happy birthday, Katniss."

I hated to say I'd already had breakfast, and nodded my thanks. He went upstairs to wash.

The door knocker rapped gently and as was my custom, I opened the door. Outside was Peeta Mellark. He had with him a box of cheese buns (I would recognise the box anywhere) and a ridiculously beautiful cake.

"Happy birthday," he smiled, his tone gentler than Cray's had been moments before. I gawped at the cake and him until he cleared his throat. "I'm here to make a delivery?"

I ushered him inside and he deposited the cheese buns first, then the cake, onto the round table which held mine and Cray's glasses.

"I'm sorry you can't spend your birthday with your family." Tears sprang to my eyes.

"The cake is beautiful," I deflected.

"I spent a while on it, Cray spent good money on it." His brow furrowed for a second and he kicked at nothing.

I surveyed the cake. It was a beautiful orange, the colour of the sunset, adorned with dark leaves so real they looked as though they might have sprung from a tree in the forest. Aside from the sunset, it was very much a _me_ cake, if ever there was one.

"I didn't know you iced the cakes," I said flatly. "It's wonderful, Peeta."

"Leave him, Katniss." His blue eyes were piercing and urgent, and I heard footsteps upstairs.

"You know I can't!" I hissed.

"You have enough money now to be rid of him, you can be free!" He took a step closer until I could feel his desperate breaths against my cheek.

"I will never be free of him Peeta! You don't understand how this works!"

"Do you love him?" His voice grew louder. "Is that why you won't leave?"

"Of course I don't! Why do you even care?" I growled.

"Because I love you, Katniss!" His lips pressed against mine and for a second, mine moved with his. The boy with the bread claimed to love me.

No-one loved me unless they wanted something from me.

"Get away!" I pushed him with all the force I could muster, and he stumbled back, narrowly missing the cake. "I don't know what you want from me, but I'm not for sale any more!"

I shoved him out of the door just in time to see my owner huffing down the stairs, bottle in hand.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sorry guys, having a bit of writer's block.**

* * *

Days passed by quickly but monotonously. The fire I'd once felt to save my family had been doused by the acts I'd been forced to commit; the love I once felt for my mother and sister was souring considerably. In short, I had no-one left.

The money my mother earned from her healing and my hunting was sustaining our family without my allowance from Cray, but it was impossible to end our relationship now. He had a hold over me and everyone I was involved with; I couldn't leave without incurring his wrath and leaving us once again starving.

I continued to hunt with Gale every Sunday, but became confident and quick enough to hunt alone successfully. The 73rd Hunger Games passed without a threat to myself nor Prim. Once again District 12 had no victor.

I refused to visit the bakery after my birthday, but I saw Peeta Mellark frequently. He sat two rows in front and to my right in each lesson I had with him, but he never attempted to make any contact with me any more. I refused each cheese bun Prim brought to me, and began a life without bread. I tried to cleanse my life of the boy who'd seen me as nothing more than a shiny trinket to be bought, when I had thought so much more of him.

But I couldn't part with his sweater, despite all the cruel things I thought about him.

* * *

My 16th birthday passed, and I spent the day within the woods. It was a Sunday, and Gale met me as was our routine. We hadn't had a great haul, despite it being the sunniest day since August and the woods being full of wildlife. We may have been too carefree, I may have been too elated.

"Catnip," he began, swinging his feet in the lake, "Do you ever think about running away?"

"No." I answered instantly. I had. I always thought about running away, to the point where my meagre bags would be packed and I'd be halfway out the door, then I'd turn to see Prim's small figure crunched up in bed, and return quietly so as to keep her unaware.

"Why?"

"There's nowhere to run, no-one to look after Prim and my mother. I can't leave Cray."

"But you can, Katniss! Or we could take them with us!"

"We've got all the kids to look after. Hazelle would never leave."

Gale frowned and tucked my hair behind my ear. "I just can't stand the thought of you being captive with him for the rest of your life."

I laughed hollowly. "You never know, maybe he'll beat me to death or I'll be reaped for the Hunger Games – if the odds are in my favour."

"No!" Gale shouted, his voice echoing in the trees around us. Scared birds flew to the sky at the sound. "No," he repeated, softer. "I don't want you to die, Katniss. I just want you to be free. Free to love whomever you choose." I remained silent, staring at the ripples his toes made in the glassy water. "I think it's my dream, more than yours," he said quietly. "I dream that you can be free to love me back."

I gawped. "Really, Gale? Why would you say that?" I jumped up, taking the water with me, and stomping wetly back to my boots.

"Don't walk away from me! I know you feel it too, the fire between us. The way your heart beats a little faster when our fingers touch. I can save you from him; I'll kill him for you!"

"Gale! You can't say things like that!" I admonished, pulling on my boots.

"Stop deflecting!"

"There's nothing between us, Gale! This isn't some sick love triangle between you, me and the man who _pays me for sex_!"

"You know I don't mean it like that! You can leave him Katniss, we can get rid of him! I can save you!" He followed me noisily as I swung my game bag over my back and trudged away.

"What is it with you men! Always on my birthday, always with the damn _save you_ crap! I can't _be_ freed, Gale! I can't leave him without ending up exactly where I was or worse! Do you realise the power he has?"

"Who else is trying to save you?" His question was so quiet and broken, I stopped and turned to him. He stood underneath a towering tree, leaning against the bark as though he was too weary to continue. His trousers were rolled up and where the water had touched it, his skin was lighter, less covered in the omnipresent coal dust that we all lugged around, a second skin.

"Mellark."

"The boy with the bread? The baker's son? Which one? Rye?"

"Peeta."

"Oh," he murmured, slumping down against the tree. "When?"

"Since the beginning. It all, er, came to a standoff on my last birthday."

"Cray had him before today? The guy's got gall, I'll give him that." Gale said sadly, running his hands through his hair.

"No, between me and him, Cray didn't- hang on, what do you mean before?"

"You didn't see him this morning?"

My stomach flipped. I'd left the house at eight, and Gale had joined me at twelve. "No. Why?"

"Cray, er, revived the old whipping post." He couldn't finish what he began, if he even would have, as I took off running.

The Seam rushed past me as I hurtled towards the Merchant quarter, Gale in tow. I smacked the door open and it clapped against the wall.

Mrs Mellark stood at the counter.

"Where is he?" I gasped.

She looked at me, disgusted. "Tell your damn boyfriend to keep his hands off my son! Disgraceful! Forty lashes for _nothing_! It's brought disgrace upon my family!"

"Where is he?" I screeched at her.

"With your slut of a mother, Larkspur! Get out of here!"

She didn't have to tell me twice. I ran home, my lungs burning for air. The door was open and I careened through it.

Peeta lay unconscious on our dining table, his back a mess of shredded skin and welts. My mother, his father, and my sister stood by.

"Peeta," I croaked.

"Don't wake him." My mother's voice was authoritative and I whipped to the sound.

"Don't you tell me what to do, when you've had nothing to do with any of this for _years_." I hissed. "This is my business."

Peeta's father made his excuses and left, until it was just Gale, Peeta and I in the room.

"It's okay, Catnip. You don't have to explain." He paused; rudely I hadn't even turned to him, my fingers ghosting over Peeta's. "I was never an option, even if you were free."

I said nothing, and he left without a word.

Peeta woke sometime later in the night, face agonised. "Katniss," he attempted, but his voice was broken and he could barely speak.

"Don't try to talk," I whispered back. "Go back to sleep, you're safe, I'm here."

His eyes closed but he didn't sleep, and neither did I.


	9. Chapter 9

**Stealing a line from my favourite HP character in this chapter. Sorry about any confusion last chapter; it's probably my bad - Cray didn't notice anything before on Katniss' 15th birthday when Peeta kissed her. This happens on Katniss' 16th, a year later, and Peeta's gone and done something else IN THE NAME OF THE LOVE OF KATNISS...and all'a that jazz. **

**To cdj88, I couldn't reply because you were anonymous, but I realise writing this here may be beneficial to everyone. In regards to the timeline:**

**Mr Everdeen dies when Katniss is 13. They manage for a year and a bit before Katniss is forced to succumb to Cray. Prim's 11th birthday is in June, the Reaping is three months later in September, and Katniss' birthday in October. As of this chapter, she is 16.**

* * *

Peeta's agony lasted days, the weather being unusually warm for October, and the most I could do was use a cold compress to alleviate his pain. I slept very little, staying by his side for no good reason I could see other than this undoubtedly being my fault.

We had whispered conversations in the dead of night and he never mentioned his tormentor, nor what he'd done to deserve his whip. Whenever my eyes closed and he thought I was asleep he would run his fingers across my features, rough in a different way to mine. I let him continue.

"My neck hurts," he whispered one night.

"Mine too," I replied with a smile. "Turn your head."

"I want to keep looking at you, though. I don't see you enough."

"You see me every day, Mellark," I said, disgruntled.

"Not like this, though. You're close enough right now that I know you're not just something I've dreamed up."

"I don't see why anyone would dream up someone as worthless as me."

Worthless was Cray's favourite new word. At first I placated myself by thinking he wasn't right – I was worth half of his allowance. But eventually I succumbed to the realisation he was right. I had no more worth than an animal ready for slaughter.

"You don't see yourself clearly, Katniss. You're not a bad person. You're a good person who bad things have happened to."

I thanked whatever luck or odds had made it possible for Cray not to have seen our kiss the year before, and hated them for whatever Peeta had done to incur his wrath.

It came to light that Cray was furious. When I went to his house as part of my usual routine – I could hardly shirk it now – he gave me such a beating that when I arrived home, the conscious Peeta tried to jump up from his spot and caused fresh blood to seep through his bandages.

Once he was healthy enough to return home, I found out what he had done to incur my owner's wrath: he had tried to buy me back. While Prim, who finally understood the situation, claimed this was purely out of kindness, I knew better: Peeta truly did think my love could be bought, that my love could be forced out of me for money. Whatever steps I'd taken in running to him on my birthday, I took twenty steps backwards. Mellark and I stopped talking, and I resumed my old routine, though Gale being a part of it was less and less frequent.

* * *

Cray formally introduced me as his _partner_ during the Victory Tour. Each year, the victor of the Hunger Games would make a tour of all the districts, ending in 12, for a meal with all the busy bodies of the town – and Cray was one of these.

I borrowed one of Madge's dresses; it was held in her house, for a modest 20 people: stylists, victors, the mayor and family, and the Head Peacekeeper. The Head Peacekeeper and his _girl._

I wore a yellow taffeta dress and my hair was loose around my shoulders, with a plait like a crown around my head. Madge had been attempting hair styling.

Haymitch Abernathy approached me during the night where I stood by the drinks table. "How are we, Sweetheart?"

"Fine thank you, Mr Abernathy. And yourself?"

"Haymitch. Surprised ol' Cray's got you out in public."

"You're as surprised as me," I countered.

"The entire district knows, but bringing you in front of cameras is a different thing." I stared apprehensively at the cameras that flitted near me like giant bugs. "I heard what happened to the baker's boy. In love, are you?"

I balked. "No! Not at all!"

"So he really just wanted to _buy _you?"

Cray appeared to save my skin in time, and led me to a deserted corridor of the Justice Building.

"You look so wonderful tonight, girl." He reeked of alcohol and I averted my face. "Don't look away from me!" His hand dipped and came under my dress, hiking it past my knees.

"N-not here!" I protested.

His fist met my face and I gasped, feeling the sting as my teeth split my lip. "I own you, you get paid to do what I say. And I say here."

He was inside me suddenly, lifting me up onto a table that held a small plant pot with a purple flower. I stopped attempting to bat him away and sat there, sweating, while he pushed into me repeatedly. Blood filled my mouth and I had to swallow it. Time passed slowly, warped.

"He wouldn't be able to make you feel like this!" He growled in my ear. I groaned. Not this again. "You're used to a _real_ man, a baker's boy wouldn't make you feel how I do! Tell me!"

It had all started after my birthday, after the whipping. Cray seemed to think I wanted to be bought by Peeta. And so I spoke the truth.

"Peeta would never make me feel like you do." He would never cause me so much pain and make me hate myself. "He'd be gentle."

"And you like it rough," he growled back. I said nothing.

* * *

Prim turned thirteen that year. She'd survived her first Reaping with only one entry, and I had survived mine. The reaping of the 74th Hunger Games, for once, did not implant dread in me. Prim however, had her nightmare as she had the year before, and I expected it to become an annual occurrence. I ushered her, dressed in a pale pink dress, towards the town centre, where the Reaping took place. I kissed her forehead before she trudged off to the 13yr old pen. I took my place in mine.

I could see Cray standing at the side of the main stage, accompanied by the mayor.

Effie Trinket was, in my mind, like a very small bird that had been stretched. She was fluffy and colourful and exotic, but very thin and almost spindly. Whatever I compared her to, I had never seen one in District 12. But they all looked like that in the Capitol.

She began by reciting, as was the custom each year, the reasons we succumbed to the Games. And then, it was time. My stomach did not dip this year. I was confident, in my own sick way, that nothing could happen to anyone I cared about.

"Ladies first," her hand ruffled around in the bowl for a few seconds, like a bird caught in a net. She picked one and peeled it open. "Primrose Everdeen," she called crisply.

There was a sigh from the crowd, and my stomach jolted. Two entries out of hundreds. Each child from the Seam that took tesserae, each Merchant that was in the running…they'd all been surpassed by the girl from the Seam with only two entries.

I watched Prim make her way to the stage, escorted by Peacekeepers. Tears were running down her cheeks, and as soon as I heard her whimper, my brain sprang back into action.

"I volunteer!" I screamed, running after Prim. The other sixteens made a pathway for me and I ran, bumping into the occasional body. The Peacekeepers let me go. "Don't! Don't take her, I volunteer!"

I stopped before the stage. "I volunteer."

"No!" Cray's voice was louder in the expanse than my own. "I forbid you! You cannot go!"

"Now, now, Sir!" Effie tinkled. "How exciting! A volunteer!" I walked up the steps towards her, feeling weak.

I saw Peeta emerge from the crowd to envelope Prim and lead her back to her pen. I caught his eye.

"I'm coming, too." He mouthed. I shook my head infinitesimally.

"I'll bet that little girl there was your sister?" She didn't wait for my answer. "How lovely!"

"You can't go! I _forbid_ it!" Cray bellowed, stomping over to me and grabbing my arm. "Take the child instead!"

Effie bristled, panicking as I was pulled away. I caught sight of us in the large screens, televising this to the whole of Panem. My face was inscrutable.

Capitol Peacekeepers stepped in and pulled Cray off me, before leading me back to the microphone and Effie.

"You finally get what you wanted, Sweetheart!" Haymitch Abernathy stumbled across the stage to me. "Hey, maybe if the odds are _really_ in your favour, you'll win and come back to where you left off!"

I pushed him away, and he stumbled and fell off the stage. Effie Trinket looked ready to cry.

"What an exciting Reaping!" She covered, her voice trembling and high pitched. Somewhere inside the Justice Building, I heard another roar that I knew to be Cray's. "And now for the boys!"

My eyes found Peeta's. His words, mouthed desperately to me across the town centre, made me panic. _He won't volunteer_, I repeated to myself. _He won't do that_. He smiled at me; _he would_.

Effie pulled out the slip. "Peeta Mellark."

It seemed he didn't have to.


	10. Chapter 10

**Thank you for your overwhelming response last chapter.**

* * *

We were ushered into the Hall of Justice after the ceremony, while Peeta stared holes into the back of my head. I thought for a brief moment that we'd be left alone together, but I was then left alone in a cold room. My mother and sister came first.

"You have to win, Katniss!" Prim's tears were relentless and I stooped to hug her. "Promise me you'll win."

Here was my first choice in a long while, one that really would matter. I could promise Prim I'd return, and return to her and Cray and my mother and continue my life as it was. I could tell her the truth, that I hoped I wouldn't return and she was to carry on without me. Or I could lie and tell her I'd come home, and not.

"Of course I will, Prim."

I stood and turned to my mother. "You can't zone out this time. I won't be here to pick up the tab for our life. You've got to make this work."

Her blue eyes shone. "I- I won't, Katniss. I never had a chance to thank you, I know I should have before, for the things you do. For us. I know it's such a big sacrifice. I'm sorry you had to do that."

I swallowed the urge to scream, _S__orry doesn't cut it._ Instead I said "I know. I love you."

She opened her mouth to say more, but the door slammed open and there stood Cray. "Get out! Both of you!"

They scuttled and I stepped backwards.

"I forbade you! I forbade you to go and you continue! You'll pay for this!"

"I've been paying for years!" I cried, tears starting as I faced my last trial.

He slapped me and the force made my neck spasm, but I stood my ground. Not for long; he pushed me to the couch and began pulling up my dress.

"No! Stop!"

"All the money I've spent on you! All the chances I gave!" He pushed my underwear aside and plunged into me, tearing something on his way.

"Please!" I begged. I didn't want my last memories of District 12 to be tainted by the man who'd tainted everything else in my life. "No!" I screamed and my throat seared with tears.

"This time, I'm getting my money's worth!"

I screamed and clawed at the arm of the couch, my chin slamming into the wooden piping repeatedly. At first I focused on the small lamp in arm's reach from me. I studied the roses that smattered it, but then the pain became too much and I closed my eyes, scrunched up against the dim light of the room.

"You'll be with your damn baker now, you slut! All you've ever wanted!"

I sobbed loudly and mucus and tears mingled on my upper lip. Each time I'd tried to hold it together. Each time I'd tried not to let him see me cry. My last chance and I'd blown it. I cried for my last shred of dignity. My chin was bruising.

"If you ever come back here, I'll kill you!" He growled into my ear, breathless from the exertion. Almost like the first time, I felt my body rejecting him, the splitting inbetween my legs, the blood lubricating his endeavours. I hated my body.

"I'll skin you alive like the damn animals you poach off the Capitol's land!"

And then he was gone; the intruder seized and torn away from me. I slumped back against the arm, tears streaming down my face. Capitol Peacekeepers pulled me up and righted me, and I felt nothing. Sobs wracked my throat. Either way, I was going to die. If I won, if I lost, he'd have his way.

* * *

When we left for the train, Effie put her arm around me.

"Poor dear, you poor, poor dear. Absolutely barbaric, how they let these things happen! In the Hall of Justice! To a potential victor!"

I wiped my nose on my wrist; my dress sleeves too high to be used as a handkerchief. Peeta looked at me as we walked and his hand grazed mine for a millisecond. I cursed the cameras that saw me now, bleeding and crying. They would only see the tears. They would only see the weakness.

"You've been so brave, Katniss," Effie said, squeezing my hand. "So, so, brave."

* * *

I was sent straight to my cabin. The Avox in my room turned the shower on for me, and waited in the corner of the bathroom while I collapsed to the floor and cried. She held out a towel for me once I was done.

She combed my knotted hair through her fingers, and tears sprang anew to my eyes as I thought of my mother doing the same when I was a young girl.

When I returned to the main carriage, it was excruciating.

Effie Trinket, birdlike as ever, tweeted about the _sacrifice_ I'd made and how _beautiful_ and _moving_ it was for me to do that for my sister, in her equally chirpy accent. I liked her more, admittedly, after her kindness following my 'ordeal'.

Peeta sat across from me, staring at me intensely. He wanted to talk, that much was obvious, but I had very little to say.

District 12 only had one living victor, and that said victor was currently sleeping off alcohol in his cabin.

Effie disappeared for a moment to check on Haymitch, and Peeta and I were left alone.

"I don't want to talk about it, Peeta."

"I know you don't. I wasn't going to ask you. You're free now, Katniss. It's over."

"It's never going to be over," I muttered. "And now you've been dragged into an even bigger mess."

"I would have volunteered anyway, Katniss. I'm going to bring you home."

"For what, Peeta?" I screeched, slamming my hands on the table. "To come back and _pick up where I left off_? That's the last thing I want! I want to die in the arena and forget that I ever had to do this."

"Don't say that," he whispered. "I couldn't live without you."

"You won't be alive if I live! You haven't thought this through, Peeta! I go back, you don't, and Cray will kill me anyway!"

"He wouldn't dare. You're not in this alone any more." His hand reached across the expanse of the table to mine. I grasped it.

"When you win, Peeta, don't go home. Please." I hoped my eyes could convey what words could not.

"I won't win, Katniss. Even if I did, I wouldn't go home without you." I nodded, breathing a sigh of relief.

"Thanks for trying, Peeta. Before. Really."

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more." He whispered, thumb running over mine. "I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. I don't care if you don't want to be with me, Katniss. I just want you to be free."

I opened my mouth to reply but Haymitch, supported by Effie, stumbled into the car. Our hands jumped apart.

"Broke up a beautiful reunion did we?" Haymitch chuckled, collapsing into the seat next to me. "Star-crossed lovers and what-not!"

Effie's eyes twinkled. "Are you two-?"

"No!" I exclaimed, while Peeta stared blankly at me. I suppose I'd just answered his question.

"No need to be embarrassed now, Katniss! Ah, a love story! So wonderful!" She chirped. "And after all of your hardship and being kept apart by that _evil_ man," it seemed Haymitch had caught Effie up on the missing parts of her story, "you have to fight to the death! Oh, my dears, the odds certainly aren't in your favour!"

For once, I agreed with Effie Trinket.


	11. Chapter 11

The Capitol was nothing like I'd imagined it; it was better. Buildings scraped the sky and colours shot at me from as far as the eye could see. The people were also very little like Effie Trinket. I came to understand that Effie's fashion sense was _muted_ for the districts- citizens of the Capitol dressed more outlandishly and looked far outrageous in comparison to her. I spotted one man with sparkly blue tentacles as a beard, and a woman with her hair shorn at the sides with a curled infinity shape peeking up from her crown. In short, I thought they looked ridiculous.

My Seam look did not belong here, and neither did Peeta's Merchant. They stripped me of everything that, before then, I hadn't realised made me, me. My hair was snipped, in other places ripped out, and they even plumped up specific places in my body that made me look healthy in a way I never had. I looked like a woman.

And somehow, that was worse when the fall out came.

* * *

Cinna, my stylist, became a friend in a way I had never expected. I found myself telling him the truth about District 12 and my relationship with Cray, and he held my hand between both of his while I cried again for how ashamed I was. Cinna told me that surviving was not a sin. He dressed Peeta and I in flames for the opening ceremony and we outshone each other district and tribute, holding hands for the first time.

But the whispers had begun for a different reason, and try as I did to ignore them, I knew what they were in reference to – I knew they were because of the spectacle during the Reaping, I knew all of the tributes for the most part had heard whispers of what happened in the Justice Building.

Peeta and I became silent in each other's presence. Talking to one another was excruciating as I would not allow him to say or do anything he wanted to, and he wouldn't stop trying. In the end, Haymitch and Effie gave up.

I gave up, and accepted I would die in the arena.

Each night in the days before the games, I imagined ways in which I would die, and by whose hand – Cray, Peeta, Cato, Clove with her knives, muttations from the Gamemakers' hands. Finally I settled on the only one that I felt might save me. I would kill myself.

Suddenly with this mindset, I found a new lease of life. Knowing the time I had was short made me want to enjoy it even more. I learnt every new skill I could and thrived in the training sessions. When my individual evaluation came, the fire in my chest sent an arrow through an apple in a pig's mouth on the Gamemakers' feast table. I became a threat.

I hoped it might redeem me – no longer was I just a slut from District 12, I now was competition. But it didn't work like that.

* * *

Haymitch sat me down alone in our seating area on the day of my interview.

"I don't know how to tell you this, kid. So I'm just going to spit it out."

"Do."

"Er, everyone knows about you and Cray. None to the full extent, but word got around after the Reaping and- well, you'll need to do damage control."

"In what sense?" I was genuinely mystified. I hadn't managed to save my reputation in the district, and I failed to see how I would save it in the Capitol, where each and every mind thrived on gossip and excitement. The exploitation of an underage girl was exciting.

"The idea is to make the people of the Capitol _feel_ for you. Even though you'd come across well as ruthless, I think the best way to go is to make you look innocent – try and keep the Careers off your back when you get into the arena."

"Make people feel sorry for me, you mean?"

"Yes. Yes, exactly. Make them wish they could've helped you while you were at home – make them want to help you in the arena."

"And how exactly are we going to do that?"

* * *

"Last, but definitely not least," came the voice of Caesar Flickerman, booming throughout the studio, "District Twelve!"

A ruckus of applause ensued. "Please give a warm welcome to the Girl on Fire, Katniss Everdeen!"

I stalked out, clad in flames once again, and waved at the crowd. We made small talk for a while, stunted and awkward, until Caesar asked about Prim, and the eyes of the audience welled. At the beginning of my second minute, the blue haired alien sat beside me asked the question I had been prepared for.

"We all saw your Reaping – the bravery when you volunteered for your sister. But we also saw the reaction that your Head Peacekeeper gave. He seems to feel very strongly for you."

The previous questions about Prim were useful in this sense. "Things aren't the same in the districts as in the Capitol," I gave a breathy laugh. "We were starving. Prim was starving. I had- I had no choice in the entire thing – he, he forced me." I let crocodile tears well in my eyes as I met Cinna's in the audience. "I had to do it to survive."

Caesar took my awkward explanation and transformed it into a bird that soared across Panem – the ordeal of a girl only trying to save her sister, the cruelty of the districts, the freedom the Hunger Games had given me.

I nodded along to each word he said, and then opened my mouth to damn my soul. "It was hard – I've been in love with someone else but we could never be together because of it."

Caesar's eyes lit up again at the thought of a love triangle, between a girl, a boy, and the man who was paying her for sex. "Well, Katniss – I'm sure when you win, and return home, there'll be nothing standing in the way of your love."

"Well, winning won't help at all in my case."

"And why not?"

My buzzer sounded. "And there goes our time!" A sigh from the audience. I had them enraptured. "Katniss, our Girl on Fire – thank you, and may the odds be in your favour!"

I smiled and waved and exited. Haymitch clapped me on the back when I'd returned. "Great job, Sweetheart."

I turned my attention to the screen, where Peeta and Caesar were doing a little skit with sniffing each other. In the lights, Peeta's hair looked even blonder, his eyes somehow bluer. He shone.

"Now then, Peeta," Caesar shot a winning grin, "since we didn't get to hear from Katniss about her love life – give us some insight into yours! I'm sure you had girls lining up for you back home."

"Not really," Peeta said modestly. I'd spent so much time ignoring Peeta that the result was ignoring half of the girls in school, as Peeta's eyes and winning personality drew them all in. "There was one girl from my district, one that I fell in love with a long time ago – but it was complicated. We'll never be together."

The audience sighed and Haymitch squeezed my shoulder.

"Why not, Peeta? No one could resist those eyes, am I right?"

There was a cheer and Peeta smiled. "I couldn't save her from – what she was going through. I tried."

"Well, Peeta, once you win these games and go home to Twelve, I'm sure she'll let you sweep her off her feet!"

"Winning won't help in our case." Realisation appeared on Caesar's face at the repeat of my own words while Peeta continued. "There can only be one Victor."

The meaning behind his words was lost on no-one.

* * *

I stared at my forearm. I could barely feel the tracker. I was ushered into a square room, empty but for my friend and stylist.

I ran towards him and he hugged me tight. "If I could, I'd bet on you, Katniss."

"Do you mean that?" I whispered.

"I do. While you're in there, remember what I told you. Surviving isn't a sin."

The countdown began and Cinna slipped on my coat before leading me to the glass tube that would raise me into the arena.

"I'll see you soon, Katniss." He kissed my cheek gently.

"Goodbye, Cinna." I said sadly as the glass closed, separating us. I saw the look in his eyes and the set of his jaw – he knew it was my final goodbye to him. My resolve hadn't changed.

The floor moved underneath me and I rose up until the brightness of the artificial sun blinded me. I was in the arena. Green trees encircled the tributes, and right ahead of me was the Cornucopia, where a bow lay ready for me. I turned to my left. Peeta was next to me. He smiled, and I returned it.

_Don't step off the plate before the countdown is over,_ I remembered Haymitch's warning. But as Peeta's hand crossed the expanse to mine, I realised this gesture wouldn't result in our demise just yet.

His hand clasped mine, and the counter ticked to zero.


	12. Chapter 12

Sorry about the wait. I've had a very rough week.

To those critical of my 'skipping over' the games – firstly, don't review on anonymous because I then have to waste my time here explaining, and secondly, if canon, or roughly so, I'm omitting it. There's no point reading it twice, it's tedious.

* * *

My hand lost Peeta's as I sprinted towards the Cornucopia, towards my bow. I'm there before the others but not out in time.

Clove's knife whistled past my head and I felt it graze my ear. I tried to run as quick as possible to where Peeta was waiting, two backpacks in hand, near the trees. My foot snagged on something and I went stumbling down on my knees.

The searing pain started and I look down – Clove had embedded her knife in my foot. A howl of pain escaped me and I looked up to see her advancing towards me.

"Say bye-bye, Lover girl!" The roaring around her seemed to stop for a second as I looked up into the eyes that would see my last breath. My hand twisted around the handle in my foot.

I pulled the knife out of my foot and lodged it into her stomach. Peeta's arms were under mine, pulling me away instantly, as she began coughing blood.

"Peeta," I wailed. "Peeta."

"It's done now, Katniss. We need to get out of here and look at that foot." He kissed my forehead.

Peeta walked with me in his arms for three hours, stopping not once for a rest.

"You need to put me down, Peeta. You're tired. Just leave me here, now. It'll be easier."

"You told me yourself, I'm strong. You weigh less than nothing Katniss."

"You're always looking after me," I whispered into his shoulder. "This time I was going to look after you, I was going to get you out. I've ruined it already."

My time in the arena would be short.

The first night, Peeta and I slept in a cave near the river. Half of the pool had been killed – my knife had taken Clove's life, Districts 4, 6, 7, and 9 had lost both of their tributes, and District 10, District 3 and District 8 each lost a tribute.

District 12 was about to lose a tribute also. Peeta and I laid in wait in our cave for my death to come while he begged Haymitch to send aid. My heart was beating incredibly fast and I had a fever. My poor medical knowledge could diagnose blood poisoning. My decision to save Peeta was now null and void – I wouldn't be alive long enough to protect him and then end myself.

* * *

Peeta had left to get water, and I stared dazily at the roof of the cave. I heard a distant noise approaching, a tuneful ringing, and looked to the mouth of the cave.

In slid a small container connected to a parachute. Haymitch had finally sent something. I detatched the parachute slowly, trying to push through the fog that surrounded me and the heaviness in my head. Inside the container was a note, and a small silver pot.

"I'm sorry Sweetheart. Use generously and stay alive. –H"

I heaved myself up and my head spun, and I vomited the little water I had in my system onto the dank floor of the cave; the cream soothed my cut instantly and the skin tightened. I lavished it on, before allowing myself time to daze until Peeta returned.

The cannon woke me.

"Peeta?" He was nowhere to be found. I had no idea how long he'd been gone – but my foot was almost fully healed and I felt back to normal health. I reasoned with myself that no one could have gotten to him. Peeta was strong.

But not fast. I stood, and felt the sickening emptiness in my stomach. It must have been days since I'd eaten last. Maybe Peeta had passed out somewhere on his travels, and just needed me to find him.

I exited the cave slowly and stared at my surroundings. I could easily have been in the forest outside District 12, and the thought comforted me. I knew those woods well – and in those woods I could find Peeta.

I shot down a bird high up in the trees and deposited it into the backpack Peeta had left with me, before trudging through the trees to the river – the place it made sense for Peeta to be.

I trudged along the riverbed, spotting welts of blood across the stones. Someone had sustained an injury. My heart beat erratically – had the cannon been for Peeta?

"He's okay," came a voice from high up in the trees. "The cannon wasn't for him."

"Rue," I whispered. "Where are you?"

I saw a quick flash of her dark hair high in the trees, and then she'd disappeared again.

"They've got him, Katniss, the Careers." My heart stopped.

"Wha- why?"

Rue danced down the tree like a squirrel, before hopping to the ground next to me. She reminded me of Prim – so sure of herself but unsure at the same time. In a dangerous arena full of killers, she trusted the girl who saved her sister, and she trusted the girl who wanted to save the boy she loved.

I doubted she knew what kind of person I was.

"They've got him hostage down by their mountain of goodies. They're trying to lure you in."

"I guess I'll have to go, then, won't I?"

* * *

The Careers' pile of goodies, as Rue put it, was enormous. Like a pyramid, it towered next to Peeta as he sat, tied and wounded, in the centre. He was barely moving.

They sat near him under a canopy, laughing and eating. I looked to the sky and hoped Rue's fires would catch their attention.

It was Cato who spotted the fires, at the same time Peeta spotted me. His blue eyes shone through the dirt, sweat, and blood on his face. He shook his head in the smallest of movements. I smiled at him.

"Look! Look! Fire!"

"It can't be her!" Glimmer responded. "She's close to dead!"

"Regardless, let's go get the sucker who lit it!" Cato seemed to be frothing at the mouth for a kill. "Glimmer, stay and watch Lover boy."

"No chance!" She retorted. "He's not going anywhere! And no-one could get around the bombs without blowing him and themselves to smithereens."

Cato conceded and they ran towards the pillar of smoke that loomed on the skyline, above the trees.

Peeta and I waited barely minutes. We both knew we should wait longer, but as soon as I turned my head back towards him from their direction, I was running.

"Stop, Katniss! Stop right there!" He shouted as I neared. "It's rigged to blow up!"

I was merely feet from him, and mounds of dirt surrounded us both – under which I knew to be our death warrants. "How do I get around them?"

He guided me, and on my hunter's feet, I stepped in between each, heart hammering in my chest.

And then I was with him, right in front of him.

"Hi," I whispered, kneeling in front of him.

"Hi," he returned. Tears leaked out as I stared at him, and I brushed them away shakily. I cut away his bindings, and surveyed his injury – Cato's sword had sliced almost to the bone in his thigh. I doubted I could get him through the maze of bombs without setting one off. My heart turned to stone.

"How did they get you in?" I asked desperately.

"They carried me. You go. I haven't got long left, anyway. There's no point."

"I told you," I said fiercely, grasping his weak hands. "You're going home."

"I love you."

And my breath caught in my throat as I reached forward to him, pressing my forehead against his. "I love you too."

And I meant it. All of the years Peeta Mellark had chased me, and tried to chase away the monsters around me, all of the years I'd denied any connection in my heart to him, they melted away – and it was us, in the most desperate situation either of us had been in.

Our lips met in the same way they had on my 16th birthday. Danger was close by, and one or both of us could die by that danger's hand – but we were all that mattered. My heart hammered in my chest.

"Now there's no way I'm letting you go," I whispered.

I heaved him up and wished for the first time in the games that Gale was here - to carry him out of this destructive maze. It took a long time – more time than we had – to meander our way through. Sweat broke out on my forehead as we stepped together between the deadly objects, like graves, that would deposit us into ours.

No cannon had come. Rue was safe; we were safe. I led Peeta to the trees, then turned back to him.

"See? We made it. You're safe."

"How come every time I try to save you, I fail?" I brushed my fingertips over his forehead, moving his hair from his face.

"You saved me without even trying. Now stay here, and put this on your leg," I handed him the remainder of the cream Haymitch had given me, then turned back to the mountain of supplies. "Cover your ears."

I shot an arrow into a heavy plastic carton of water half way up the pyramid, which split and fell – everything on top following. The blast blew sky-high as a heavy box collided with a bomb. Peeta and I flew backwards through the bush and my head spun, ears ringing.

* * *

We returned to my meeting point with Rue slowly – surely she'd be there ready by now, I thought, when she was nowhere to be seen.

"Rue?" I called into the forest.

"Katniss!" Her scream was piercing, and I left Peeta standing in the thicket while I ran towards her terrified cries.

When I reached her, she was enclosed in a net. "Katniss," she begged. "Help me!"

I began sawing away at the net, my fingers grappling with the rope. We didn't have long; her cries had probably alerted anyone in the vicinity. I prayed Peeta could stay hidden.

She sprang up as I freed her, like a brave flower emerging from the snow of the winter. Her arms wrapped around me.

"Shh, shh, it's okay," I said. "You're safe."

The twig breaking was the first thing I heard – and I spun to face the boy from eight. His spear came whittling towards us and I hit the ground, before springing back up and shooting an arrow into his throat. He dropped.

"It's okay, Rue," I began, turning back to her. "He's gone-"

Rue was kneeling in the same position she had been barely a minute before, but now with a spear embedded in her stomach. She fell and I nestled her into my arms.

"Will you sing?"

Her eyes closed.


	13. Chapter 13

Sorry for such a long wait. I haven't been myself as of late and have had exams, the last of which is on Wednesday, so I hope to bring you another chapter soon after those.

* * *

We sat together at the edge of the lake, bare feet dangling in the cool water that had kept us alive. The arena was darkening, artificial light fading.

"It'll be over soon," he pointed out, tracing my jaw with his thumb.

"And you'll be going home," I said quietly, turning and pressing a kiss to his jaw.

"I don't want to keep fighting about who's going to die, Katniss," his voice broke as he finished and he hung his head. "I don't want to keep thinking about that when we have so little time left."

I smiled at him, his strong hand wrapped around mine, and thought, instead of said, what I longed to. That I was giving up what made me _Katniss_ for him- I was giving up my survival instinct to take him home, or to the Capitol where he'd be free from Cray at least. But that's what you do, I surmised, for the people you love. You volunteer for them, and you let them go home to everyone you love. You let them have your life, because that's all you have left to give them.

When I hadn't replied, he squeezed my hand and dragged me out of my reverie. "Stay with me, Katniss."

"You know I can't."

"I know you're Katniss Everdeen, and there's no such thing as can't in your book."

"Peeta," I mumbled. "I wish we could both go home," my voice was torn and weak, but I persevered, and not for the cameras or for the games, but because the boy I loved sat next to me and wanted to leave me alone. "I wish we could go home and forget everything that happened before this moment, and we could get married and live in the bakery and I'd never forget how your skin always smells like bread and sunshine."

I brushed away a tear and clenched my jaw, swallowed. "But we can't. There can only be one winner. And I promise you Peeta, I won't live without you. I'd kill myself the second you went, and then there'd be no winner at all."

But there were cameras watching. And we were in the games. And, unbeknownst to Peeta and I, the Capitol cried for our love, and begged for two victors. And a man who held the power of our nation in his palm finally realised exactly how dangerous the volunteer from District 12 was.

"There's nothing for me in District 12 but you," he argued. "I don't want to go home without you. You're everywhere at home. The first time I saw you, the first time I kissed you – and him. He'll be there; just reminding me how he took all the time we could've had together."

"I'd be everywhere at home. You wouldn't miss me for a second."

"I'd miss you every second, and you know that. Now stop it, stop talking about it."

* * *

We waited two more days in our spot, and the last time the cannon boomed, it was Thresh's face that lit up the sky.

"It'll be over soon," I said. "It got dark too quickly."

"What do you think it was?" He asked nonchalantly, gathering our supplies. We'd both startled when we heard Thresh's agonized screams. And the howling.

"Wolves? Mutts. Probably mutts."

"They're getting closer, where shall we go?"

"The Cornucopia. It's just you, Cato and I now. They're going to want the Grand Finale to be there."

His hand slipped into mine and our footsteps quickened as much as we could allow – though my foot and Peeta's leg were close to healed. Haymitch had sent miracle medicine that had more than likely depleted both of our sponsor funds, but with so little time left in the arena, it was welcome.

Peeta's hand grazed a bush of berries as we walked and he halted to pick some. "I'm kind of hungry," he admitted. "Want some?"

I nodded and he scattered a few in my palm. Just as I was about to bring them to my lips, I recognised them.

"Peeta!" I knocked the berries from his palm flying. "That's nightlock!"

Peeta looked dumbly at me.

"They're lethal!" Steps away from him winning this thing and he nearly took that away? He bent down and picked the closest berries up. I wrapped my arms around him. "Please don't do that to me."

He knew what I was really saying – don't kill yourself. And I knew he felt the same. But I still gathered a handful of the berries into my pocket. Was I selfish for wanting an easier suicide?

* * *

"I have one left." I said to Peeta. I fumbled with the arrow, trying to drown out Cato's cries.

"Make it count." Peeta whispered, his voice failing as he lost more and more blood.

I let it fly to Cato and his cries ceased. The mutts dissipated, returned to their home by some silent call from the Gamemakers. The artificial sun rose high into the sky and the cannon boomed.

They were waiting for our moves. I slumped next to Peeta on the warming metal, and began fashioning him a tourniquet.

"This should last you long enough. They'll fix it completely when you get into the hovercraft. Probably give you a full body polish and wax and everything, again. You'll be all shiny and new and a bit Capitol-y. I hope not too plastic, though. I like you how you are, I like you like my Peeta. I'd hate to think you'd change and not be you and then it wouldn't be the same -"

"Stop," he croaked. "You're talking too much."

"I'm nervous," I smiled wanly. Tears were brimming in my eyes and I tried not to let them fall. "I'm not too good with saying goodbye."

"Stop saying goodbye, then." He leaned over and pressed his lips to my forehead. "Let me. This leg's going to kill me soon anyway. And it's the whole reason I came here, to get you home safe."

"The bandage should last you," I said, ignoring his words and fumbling within my pockets. "They kill instantly." In my palm I held the handful of berries I'd collected earlier.

"No!" He shouted, and I marvelled at the command in his voice with his weakening state. "You – no -" he stuttered and eventually sifted within his pockets and I saw that we were more alike than I'd ever imagined. "I love you. There's nothing for me without you, I've told you that. What's the point in going home without you? What's the point of all the riches without you to share them?"

"I won't let you die for me, Peeta. I love you too much. I've had my time. You deserve yours now." I brought the berries closer to my lips, and he grabbed my hand.

Tears streaked from his eyes making clean rivers down his face. "_No."_

We both held the berries threateningly and suddenly it dawned on me. "Together?"

He smiled. "Together."


	14. Chapter 14

It's been brought to my attention recently (thank you Anonymous guest) that another writer has recently published a story very similar to this (and which upon reading proved to be taking more than a few ideas) called The Desperate. Said author has put the story on hold for now until he/she has read Night, and I hope we can clear any confusion up about it. Many people may have had the same idea as me and coincidences happen - I don't want anyone to think I'm being all righteous about my idea.

That being said; **All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement is intended.**

* * *

"You've caused me a lot of trouble, Miss Everdeen." His eyes were snakelike and unrelenting, and I found any words I might have said in an attempt to defend myself die a quiet death in my dry mouth.

"I'll admit, your story was touching – broken home, struggle for survival, unrequited love and a tormentor taking away your innocence. For a while, even I felt for you. For a while, I believed you."

"It wasn't a lie, Sir," I managed.

"Oh, I know. Mr Cray's showstopping performance proved that. I do however dispute the love you have for a certain Mr Mellark."

"I love Peeta." I said firmly.

"It seems to me that survival is your only goal. Only a very determined young lady would succumb to a man like your Head Peacekeeper, only a young lady who felt that staying alive was worth any price."

My hands shook and the saucer and cup in my hands began to tinkle like bells.

"You knew Peeta Mellark could overpower you if it came to blows. You knew most in the arena could. And so you stayed alive using the Capitol public's support." He took a sip of his tea calmly, and lowered it back to the mahogany desk. "I think, Miss Everdeen, you hold a lot of resentment towards authority. And rightly so – Mr Cray abused you. And he took the last of your dignity in your Hall of Justice. What better way to prove yourself better than authority than to take on the authority of the Capitol? It is I who feed you, clothe you, keep you alive. And you dare make a mockery of me."

"Sir, it wasn't intentional! I had no idea-"

"You had no idea the love the Capitol citizens had for your starcrossed lovers act? You had no idea that we would have _no choice_ but to keep you both alive?"

"I thought Peeta and I would die together rather than return to District 12 and be tormented by Cray." I lowered my cup to the table and wrung my hands. "I wasn't trying to make…make a mockery of you, Sir."

"Well, what's done is done. And now you owe me, Miss Everdeen."

"I- I owe you?"

"Like I said, you've made my government a joke. Your handful of berries is threatening my authority over the entirety of Panem. And it seems you have a problem at home. Mr Cray, in case your young mind cannot follow."

"He threatened to kill Peeta and I, whichever one of us would return."

"I know. It comes as a surprise each time you underestimate my power over this nation, Miss Everdeen."

"I didn't mean-"

"Hubris Cray has been stripped of his role as Head Peacekeeper, and is currently residing in the cells beneath us. In fact, if I were to wager a guess, I would say he may be directly beneath us, give or take a few floors."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "So – he can't hurt us?"

"No. He cannot. Unless I see it fit. And this, Miss Everdeen, is where I hope you begin to understand the price of your debt to me."

"What do you want from me?" Images flashed through my head unbidden and I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat.

"I'm merciful, as you have come to discover. I will give you two options. Should your love for Peeta Mellark have been entirely for the Games, if you will, then I can arrange for your love to be annulled, per se. But you will need to repay this debt, and the debt of nearly tearing down Panem itself, by selling your love once more." My eyes widened and he smiled. "Not to Mr Cray of course. I couldn't very well return Panem's favourite Victor into a slave to a man who would most likely kill her. But very many men – powerful men – have mentioned a certain interest in you and your skills."

"What's the other option?" I breathed, not trusting the strength in my voice as it wavered.

"You will marry Peeta Mellark. Your lives will be the property of the Capitol, to view at their pleasure – each kiss, each touch, each child will be publicised. I want you to convince the districts that you really do love each other, and that you aren't the beginning of a rebellion."

"Is that what they think? I tried to start a rebellion?"

"Yes, Miss Everdeen. That is exactly what they think. Now, your answer please."

Could I choose Peeta's life for him? How could I tell him the choice I'd made, for my own sake? He would resent me forever. But the alternative was too repulsive to consider.

"On one condition."

Snow laughed, cold and cruel and patronising. "I really don't think you're in a place to be making demands, Katniss. May I call you Katniss? We'll be seeing so much of each other, it seems only fitting that we address each other as friends."

"Yes sir, that's fine. I'd like to choose your second option. To marry Peeta."

"I thought so. You may call me Coriolanus. And I'm curious- what was your condition?"

"Not to let Peeta know that I chose his life for him."

Snow reached over the expanse between us and extended his hand. "You and I are more alike than you might think, Katniss. We have a deal."

* * *

"What did he want?" Peeta asked for the umpteenth time. I was yet to come up with a suitable excuse.

"We can't talk about it now," I snapped. "Caesar is literally introducing us."

With a sigh, Peeta took my hand. "You're right. Come on, Girl on Fire."

To rapturous applause, we made our way out in front of the studio audience and took our seats for the Victor's – or in this case, Victors' – interview. It was the closest we'd been since the arena. I'd drifted from Peeta in my horror of returning him to Cray's clutches.

"Well," Caesar said, blue hair and eyes alight. "Who would have thought this would happen? Two victors! The first in history. Tell me, how did you both feel when the announcement came?"

I jumped over Peeta's answer to respond. "It was a shock. I'm sure we both felt as I did – we were going to die together. I certainly never thought the Gamemakers and the people of Panem would be so gracious as to let us both live. It was a gift, a surprise and a miracle and something I'd never hoped could happen."

I realised I was laying it on slightly thick and cowered back in my chair.

Peeta reached to me and took my hand. "Katniss is right. From the moment we entered the arena, I was ready to lay down my life for her – and the chance to be together eternally seemed like the best way for us both. Being allowed to spend the rest of our lives together is something I'd only ever dreamed of in my most secret wishes. It was something I'd never even shared with Katniss."

Peeta had absolved himself, not that President Snow had any doubts about Peeta's feelings for me to begin with. If the districts were still in a rebellious turmoil, the only person who would become their martyr was me.

"A reason for your separation before was your Head Peacekeeper. I know this a sensitive subject for both of you, but I know we're all dying to know how you're going to tackle this next challenge when you return to District 12."

"If he touches Katniss again, I will end him." My head whipped to Peeta, the uncharacteristic violence surprising me.

"I- that won't be necessary." I stuttered. "Mr Cray's actions have been scrutinized by the Capitol and he's been removed from his post and District 12." A murmur of applause began in the audience at our freedom. "That's what I wanted to tell you," I said to Peeta directly. "I wanted to wait until we got home, though."

Peeta rested his forehead against mine. "I've never been so angry with you for waiting to tell me something positive."

"Not even that I loved you?" I whispered, ignoring the audience and Caesar.

Peeta laughed, his Capitol persona returning. "Not even that, my love."

"Well," Caesar said, reaching across to hold my hand, "I personally could not be happier that after all, you two can be together. Maybe we'll be seeing a Victor wedding in the Capitol soon?"

I chuckled and squeezed his hand almost as a warning, but turned directly to the audience and the presence of President Snow in the front row. "Well, we'll have to wait and see – but you'll be the first to know."


	15. Chapter 15

Sorry I've been away for a while. New job, lots going on. You may thank the guest who told me to 'Update. Now.' for this...I felt guilty enough to write a chapter as quickly as possible! It's been too long, I'm sorry.

* * *

District 12 was nothing like my home. I returned from the glitz of the Capitol with an ache for familiarity and found nothing as it was before.

I thought my debt towards the Capitol was paid in full by selling mine and Peeta's relationship for the nation's scrutiny. I thought it was enough. I was wrong.

When we sat together on the train home, my stiff fingers curled tightly around Peeta's thumb, he smiled as a Capitol attendant called over the speakers that we were an hour away from District 12.

"We're almost home. No more cameras, no more stupid fashions, no more Games. They're over, we made it." He swooped in to kiss me, hard, on the lips.

I wondered if he could tell by my stone lips that something was on my mind.

"We can be alone," he continued, smiling. "Finally just you and I in our stupidly big Victors' house and they'll leave us alone forever."

Haymitch scoffed across the carriage where he sat soaked in liquor. "How you managed to make it out of the arena, I'll never know boy!" He guffawed. "Actually, I do know – you'd never have made it out without her!"

"Thanks, Haymitch!" Peeta said sarcastically. "To what did I owe those kind words?"

"You think they're going to leave you _alone_?" He broke into another hysterical laugh. "They're never going to leave you alone! Nor me! We're their puppets now, don't you see! They'll make you dance and when you marry they'll make you dance down a Capitol altar, and when you have your first child that just-born creature will dance all over Capitol screens. First steps. First feed. First word. All for them."

"That's enough, Haymmitch." I snapped, the lump rising in my throat. I shook Peeta's hands away from me and rushed to the intersection between carriages where a light breeze calmed my senses. I slumped against the carriage wall and felt the minute vibrations of the train underneath me. How could I have sentenced the only man I loved to this life?

I could hear Peeta and Haymitch arguing through the thick glass of the carriage door, but nothing of their words; just mumblings of angriness and hatred – not for each other, but for the situation. What I had chosen for them, unbeknownst to them. They hated it, and if they knew, they'd hate me.

The carriage door slid open noiselessly but I raised my head at the heavy tread and stench of liquor that accompanied Haymitch.

He leaned on the wall next to me. We were both silent – I, lost in my own thoughts, he, trying to voice his.

"He doesn't know, does he?" He began.

"Doesn't know what?"

"The choice you made."

I floundered for a second, my mouth open but my tongue tied as an Avox's. "What – what are you talking about?"

"While you were in the games, there was a lot of talk. I don't really know how to say this, Sweetheart. Hate to say it but I've grown a bit fond of you. You're- well, you're like my little girl. And there were a lot of men talking about the things they'd like my little girl to do to them. For money."

My head spun.

"And I don't like to say I'm high up in any circles. But I know people who are. And one of those people told me that President Snow was going to let those men buy you."

"He was." I whispered.

"And I dreaded you coming out of the games. I thought, for all of my stupid caring this time around, everything I tried not to do every other year, the one year I go and give a damn about another child going in that arena to be murdered!" He howled and smashed his glass, still half full, into the apartment door. "I wanted you to win. I wanted to save you. And I thought that everything I did was just going to bring you back into a harsher reality than you'd been living in before."

"Peeta came back too." I interjected.

"Exactly. And I have no doubt that the price you paid for not – well, doing those things….I'd imagine it had a hell of a lot to do with selling yourself and Peeta to the Capitol."

"Not like that!"

"I know, not like that. But everything I said, about your wedding and your children, you don't seem to give a care. You already knew."

"I did, yeah." I mumbled. "But I'd appreciate if you didn't tell Peeta what I did."

"It's what he wants, anyway." Haymitch placated.

"Not like this."

* * *

District 12 was anew. The train station was a marble façade. The Justice building had grown taller and even more overbearing. Peacekeepers roamed the streets ready to dole out penalties. The Hob had shut down. My district, previously in the throes of poverty, was now starving quicker than it ever had before. Because of me.

And when Peeta curled up against me in our new bed, in a new house, it was in an entirely different world altogether.

"We're finally alone," he whispered, his breath tickling the nape of my neck as I faced away from him. "Just you and me. Forget what Haymitch said – it's not true. I won't let them have us."

"The Victory tour is in six months."

"And after that, we don't have to worry. We can just be us."

"I love you," I whispered, for that was the only thing I could say that wouldn't be a lie.

"I love you too." He exhaled loudly and I felt him jump up in bed – stiffly because his mechanical leg was still taking some getting used to. "You'll never understand, Katniss, how happy you make me."

"Peeta…" I started.

"The only thing I've ever wanted, since the moment I saw you, was to spend my life with you. To grow old, and to have children. To watch our children grow up. Maybe work in the bakery like I did, but without a mother so cruel." None of Peeta's family would live with him in the new house, and he was trying not to show he cared so much about it, but I knew he did. "And now we can have all of that. Our private slice of paradise."

"I love you," I repeated, knowing that it'd never be private again.

* * *

I woke the next morning alone in bed, to the door bell ringing. The concept of having an alarm throughout the house to let me know there was a visitor was disconcerting, but I assumed I'd grow accustomed to it. I trudged down the stairs, recognising the smell of fresh bread as my stomach growled. Peeta had been baking.

I reached the door, noting through the frosted window that a dark figure stood outside. Looked like someone from the Seam.

I opened the door to find Gale Hawthorne. Across his face ran an inflamed scar, and coal dust had settled on his skin, in the pores, making his grey eyes shine like jewels in the setting of his dark face.

"We need to talk."


	16. Chapter 16

"Come in, then." I said, opening the door further and leaning against it while he collected himself and stepped through, muddy boot prints on our wood floor.

"Is he here?"

"I don't know, I only just woke up." I corrected myself. "You woke me up."

"Well then, I'm sorry for ruining the princess' beauty sleep. Go and look."

His authoritative tone and the stoic expression on his face angered me, but nevertheless I abandoned my post and Gale by the door and ventured into the kitchen.

I waited for the blond mop of hair as I turned the corner but found only the morning sun piercing through the window and illuminating the back wall and our refrigerator. On the table sat a plate of cheese buns and I allowed myself a small smile. Next to them lay a note on fancy Capitol writing paper.

_Katniss,_

_I've gone to the bakery, I need to see my father and do some baking. Be normal._

_I'll come home at lunch time to see if you're home, but you should go hunting. It's been too long. _

_Enjoy the cheese buns; I know they're your favourite._

_All my love,_

_Peeta x_

I grabbed two cheese buns from the shiny Capitol plate and slinked back into the hallway. He hadn't moved an inch. He was just staring at the grandeur that now surrounded me; I supposed he was thinking of my home or his, of the children with dirty feet on the cracked floors.

I thought the same.

"He's gone to the bakery. I brought you a cheese bun."

Even Gale in his resolute state couldn't turn down Peeta's cooking, and grabbed it, though grudgingly. "I can't stay here." He said, eyeing the house again, the carpeted floor that crept up the stairs. "Let's go to the woods."

"Alright." I conceded. "Can you come in for a moment, while I get changed?"

He stepped back on to the porch. "I'll just wait here."

I eyed his muddy prints on the floor and felt a lurch of horror that he could sully something so clean. Something so Capitol.

My hands shook and bile lurched into my throat. I threw him the bun that had grown sweaty in my palm, and with his hunter's reflexes he caught it. "You have it. I don't want it any more."

I left the door open and cantered up the stairs, the noise of my heels slamming against the wood floors then the caress of the carpeted stairs on my bare feet sickening me.

I careened into mine and Peeta's bedroom and slammed the door shut. I slumped against the door for a second, breathing heavily. My heart pounded painfully, not least because of the talk that was to come. But I couldn't think of it, or I'd never leave the room.

How I would love to never leave the room.

I pottered into the en suite and found cushiony towels waiting. I ignored them and stepped into the shower. Puzzling over the location of the on switch I was horrified by the sudden gentle pattering of water that descended down on me, and the screen which appeared before me.

"Welcome Katniss," a robotic voice began. "Please select your settings."

The lukewarm water pitter-pattered down on me and I just couldn't take it. I slammed my thumb into the first setting and grew nauseous as I was enveloped in an artificial rose scent.

Snow, everywhere.

I hurled myself out of the shower and grabbed the stupid cushiony towel and hated the comfort of it against my skin. I brushed my teeth absent-mindedly and walked to the double doors I knew to contain my closet, though I hadn't yet seen it.

It was gigantic. Larger possibly than mine and Peeta's room. Ball gowns and fur coats and jewellery laden. I searched desperately for my hunting gear.

Finally, in a tumult of fabric, I found a plain black vest and some trousers, both plain in comparison to the finery around them but nevertheless more grand than anything I'd ever worn before in District Twelve.

I braided my wet hair as I walked down the stairs in new, uncomfortable boots and sighed in relief when I saw my father's hunting jacket and game bag folded on a small chair nearby the door.

Peeta was too good to me.

I slung it on and closed the door behind me, wondering briefly if I should lock it.

"You don't have to lock it, Katniss. No-one is desperate enough to be caught stealing from Victors' Village on Capitol camera." Gale said, his mouth tilting into a grimace.

"I didn't- I wasn't-" I closed my mouth. His eyes perused my outfit and I could see plainly in his eyes the distaste, until he reached my father's jacket. His eyes softened and under his scars and dirt, I saw _my _Gale. "What do you mean Capitol camera?"

"Katniss, you can't tell me you're too brainwashed not to realise your damn mansion is full of surveillance." The disbelief in Gale's voice kept me biting my tongue. "Let's go."

Gale's long stride took him yards in front of me in seconds, and I hurried to catch up with him.

"Will you slow down?"

He slowed infinitesimally at first then came to an abrupt stop just outside of Victors' Village. "We can't go to the woods today."

"Why not?" I protested.

"I shouldn't be surprised that you haven't noticed with your head full of Capitol shit." I had never heard Gale swear before…well, not in a normal situation. He'd hardened. "We have a new Head Peacekeeper. And aside from the fact it has everyone in the district starving; it also means that they keep an eye on the fence. I can still get under, obviously. But with you looking like that, we can't."

"We could sneak?"

"I could sneak. You're still under surveillance, remember?"

"We're not in the house!"

"Your camera crews are still here, filming the district. I wouldn't be surprised if they're keeping an eye out for you _integrating_ with the community."

"Well, where can we go?"

* * *

We ended up at my old home. My mother and sister had gleefully moved into my Victor's home unlike Peeta's parents, and so my old house sat empty and alone.

I booted the bottom of the door and it creaked open.

Nothing had changed. Gale shoved past me and interrupted my nostalgia, sitting on the raggedy couch. I guess they didn't need it in the new house.

I joined him. "So…what did you want to talk about?"

He ran his filthy hand through his hair. "I don't know."

"Well, you're the one who showed up at my door. You didn't even say hello."

"You didn't say goodbye."

"What?" I balked.

"You- you let everyone but me, even _him_ say goodbye, but they turned me away. You didn't want to see _me_." He sang in a childish bitter voice. "What could I possibly have done that you'd go off to your death without saying goodbye? You whispered your sweet nothings to Cray but you had no time for me! After everything I've done for you, the way I told you I feel!"

"I didn't tell them you couldn't see me," I argued. I thought back to the mess I'd been in after Hubris had visited. "They were cleaning me up; they probably didn't want you to see me like that. And they had to retain Cray."

"Don't use the guilt card on me Katniss. Cray walked out of there a free man, I saw it myself. And they held me back, because _you didn't want anyone else_."

"You don't know what you're talking about. He raped me one last time in the Hall of Justice. The only justice I've had is that he's now in Snow's prison in the Capitol, and there was still a hefty price to pay for that."

"Yeah, there was. The starving people of District 12 can vouch for that."

"You have no idea Gale, no concept of what I've done!"

"Neither do you! You don't realise you've made our lives hell!"

"Well mine was hell anyway!" I stood up and turned away from him, trying to collect myself so that he couldn't hear the tears in my voice. "You think I'm so selfish. You don't know how it is to sell your last dignity to a man because you're dying, and the people you love are dying, because the only other person you loved is dead!"

"Of course I know! My father died right alongside yours! I watched Posy wilt and know suffering as a child instead of living happily and growing up a happy child. Her first memories will be of her brother coming home beaten and tired from the same place that killed her father! And it'll be the same damn place that kills me too, if the goddamn Capitol doesn't first."

"You're working in the mines?"

"Yeah. I can't poach like I used to. The Hob is closed, there's no-one to sell to. If I catch anything we eat it, and when I can't? Well, we starve. And you in your Capitol finery have the gall to tell me you've suffered."

"I've suffered, Gale! I've killed people!"

"And as a reward, you've got a Capitol that loves you, all the grandeur, and thirteen districts rallying around you like you're some sort of martyr when you're just a whore."

"Thirteen?" I ignored his jibes. Rallying around me I might understand; I knew I'd become a martyr to those oppressed. But District 13 had been blown to pieces.

"Oh, you missed that trick, did you? District 13 is alive, and they've got plans for you, Katniss. If you'd pick your lazy ass up from all your riches and listen!"

Plans with Peeta, for children and a life away from the Capitol, a life of love and normalcy and blond haired angels around our feet.

Plans with Snow to be his puppet to please his Capitol throne, or his other plan of whoring me out to the highest bidder if I didn't meet his demands.

And now, plans with a district that stopped existing 75 years ago, to use me as their puppet and martyr me?

"I've heard enough, Gale. You don't know me at all."

I turned again and left my childhood home, storming through the Seam until I reached Victors' Village.

The unlocked door slammed against the wall as I pushed it open.

"Hey, Catnip!"

I turned and Gale stood outside. "What, Gale?"

He threw something at me and I caught it easily. "I don't want your bourgeoisie bread."

He turned on his heel and I stared down at the ruined bread, oily and covered in coal dust.

I walked to the kitchen and threw the cheese bun away before stopping in front of the table.

There was a new note.

_Katniss,_

_I came by but you weren't here. I'll see you tonight._

_All my love, _

_Peeta_

_x_

I couldn't please anyone. Least of all, myself.

* * *

Allowed some alone time after Gale's departure and Peeta's absence, I found myself in the kitchen. The smell of warm bread and the not often seen sunlight shining through the windows, I imagined quietly a place in which I could raise children.

I had never wanted children. The hours of endless screaming that my mothers' patients endured; the sickly babies buried by their fathers after a particularly cold winter – the burden of love seemed too much to bear. Better to be alone and have only myself to be responsible for. Better only to have myself to disappoint.

But here in this quiet space as I watched dust motes swirl around our new home, I sank to the floor and crawled like a child under our kitchen table, and closed my eyes. I imagined the warmth of being a mother, of having a being inside me that was entirely mine and Peeta's, made of love. I imagined having a physical being made of the love I felt for Peeta.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek and for a second, cling to my chin like a climber on the edge of a cliff.

I imagined bundling our children up and taking them to the woods. I imagined the warm summer months where we could teach them to swim in the lake, and the sun setting as their hair dried in waves like Rue's did.

Rue. I imagined my child pierced by the spear of the Capitol.

I imagined coming home and cooking with Peeta – such a far off dream, since I knew I wasn't the best cook – and our children clamouring for more of their Papa's cheese buns. I imagined curling up with Peeta at night and our child between us, tiny little breaths warm at my breast.

I imagined the love I would have for these tiny unborn beings, my overwhelming desire to keep them safe and hold them up to the best of life, and to look in their Papa's eyes and see the love he had for me and for them and the gift I had given him.

I then imagined what would happen. I would grudgingly give birth to our child. Peeta would be ever so happy. The cameras would come to our door and each private moment, each treasured moment, would be stolen. The whole nation would know how our baby looked as they waddled along and fell into Peeta's arms. They would grow into a beautiful child and their first day of school, terrifying, would be documented by the camera men of the Capitol. When they scraped their knee, the nation would see.

I had sold my child's life to the Capitol so that I wouldn't have to sacrifice myself. I had almost sold my child like I sold myself to Cray. And Peeta – beautiful, caring, loving Peeta – his most private moments with the children he longed for more than he could ever love me, they were gone too.

I began to think I'd made the wrong decision. The tears continued to fall.


End file.
